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One day they look at each other and it’s too much to bear. They’ve been through so much ridiculous shit in the past year—Isaac turning into a werewolf, Isaac’s dad getting murdered, Stiles getting kidnapped and having the crap beaten out of him twice (though Isaac is only aware of the one time), going through the phase of mutual hatred because Scott was awful at communicating with both of them, dealing with the Alpha Pack and the hell it’d wrought on Beacon Hills—and this is the first time, in a full and solid year, that there’s been one whole month without anything bad happening or anyone turning up murdered.
They’re both terrified.
It’s June. Isaac’s over for the ninth time in the entirety of the time they’ve known each other because Stiles invited him, he doesn’t have anything better to do. Plus, Stiles fed him once, and he’s kind of hoping it’ll happen again. He’s hungry, he keeps missing dinner at his foster home, and even after eight months he’s still not comfortable enough to eat when everyone else isn’t.
Stiles asked him to come over because it’s easier for him to deal with fear like this when he’s not alone, and everyone else he’d actually willingly hang out with seems too at ease to be around.
Isaac sits on the floor even though Stiles offers him a spot on the bed. Neither of them speak for a while. Stiles stares at the back of Isaac’s curly head, and Isaac stares into his own lap. There is so much to say, and nothing to say at the same time.
Isaac speaks first, voice sounding dull and tarnished. It’s turning summer and he didn’t get to go last year and he just…can’t stop thinking about it. A place where you can really feel the open space and how small you are and the sun on your back. “I miss the beach.”
The statement evokes a lot of images in Stiles’s head; the smell of warm sand and the sea and the desire to go seem to suddenly overwhelm him. He hasn’t done anything impulsive in almost six months now. Not since that random decision to get pizza turned into hitting a pedestrian that turned out to be an Alpha and the entire night wound up being a constant blurry smudge of terror in which Stiles only remembers being carried out by Boyd, drenched in blood that wasn’t his, as Isaac, Erica, Derek, and Scott eviscerated anyone they got a hold of, which wasn’t the worst part—the worst part is that Stiles’s dad still doesn’t know about it, and Stiles has been having to act fine, totally fine, this entire time.
“Get up.” Stiles’s tone is clipped and business-like as he strides over to his own closet and pulls out a thick jacket. If Isaac protests, he’ll fall apart, he knows he will, he won’t be able to do it, he has a hard time driving now anyway, driving for almost any length of time, let alone the four hours to the beach, if his dad even lets him—
Isaac stands and looks at him, face carefully blank, arms crossed against his own chest, like he’s trying to hold himself in. Or keep himself from falling open. That last one’s probably more accurate. He doesn’t ask any of the questions he wants to, doesn’t say anything, really, just watches Stiles with eyes more cautious than they’ve ever been before. “Where are we going?” And yes, suddenly it’s we, because the desperate look in Stiles’s eyes means Isaac isn’t leaving him alone, at least not yet. He’s not sure when he stared to worry about Stiles like that but he does and he may as well deal with it.
Stiles is caught totally by surprise and he tucks his jacket under his arm, shakes his head, doesn’t answer, not really. “I dunno if we’re going anywhere yet. Just—do you have anywhere to be tomorrow?”
Isaac raises his eyebrows and twists his mouth to the side, having no idea whatsoever what Stiles is trying to say but taking his question seriously anyway. “Um. No. School got out last week, remember?”
Stiles nods once, sharply, and then walks out of the room. Isaac’s eyebrows stay high and he hears Stiles clunk partway down the hall before coming back and standing in the doorway with his arms crossed, rolling his eyes. “Well come on.” He starts away again, and this time Isaac follows.
Stiles swallows hard when they get downstairs. His dad’s sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by paperwork, and Stiles turns and looks at Isaac, watches Isaac’s eyes grow and then narrow and then settle into something somewhat normal, watches his throat work and his hands tighten on his upper arms until his knuckles are white. For once, Stiles doesn’t comment, doesn’t say ‘calm down, he doesn’t bite’ or some other smartass remark. He’s not in the mood for his own bullshit. “Hey Dad.”
His father looks up and raises and eyebrow at him. “Stiles. Isaac. You boys need something?” The man’s trying to close every open folder and scoot them away, and it makes it hard for Stiles to swallow.
Stiles swallows anyway and hates that it’s hard to talk, talking is the one thing he’s good at. “I want to take Isaac to the beach. I know it’s a long drive, and I was thinking Caspar Beach—you know the one, out by Fort Bragg, so that’s like forty miles tacked on. If we leave right now we probably won’t be home until tomorrow or the day after. We’ll stay in the Jeep, either in the RV park or just parked at a gas station or something. I know this is really really spur of the moment and it’s not super dire or important or anything but I’d really like to go. Can we go? Please Dad?”
His dad’s face crumples and he actually looks mad for a second, and then he opens his mouth, takes a breath, lets it out, and seems to reconsider. Stiles is pretty sure he was about to ask ‘did Isaac’s parents say it was okay’ and Stiles is grateful for the tact. Then Dad seems to actually brighten up a little. “If Isaac’s allowed, you drive safe, nothing funny happens, and you call me every time you stop on the road there and every twelve once you’re there. Set an alarm for the latter. Is Scott coming with you? You need some money, son?”
Stiles is tempted to joke about the ‘funny’ because if nothing funny happens then what the hell’s the point of even going, but then he realizes his dad’s saying ‘no sex’ and he wants to laugh—him and Isaac? Really? He’d never even thought about Isaac like that before. But Dad was saying yes, he wasn’t going to do anything to fuck that up, not even make a stupid joke. He answered maybe a little too fast. Scott’s head was so far up Allison’s ass right now Stiles didn’t think Scott’d even hear if they asked him to go. “No. No, it’ll just be us. Thanks, Dad. If—if you’re offering, sure I guess.”
Stiles watches in astonishment as his dad pulls out a key chain flashlight, looks over at them like they’re conspirators, and then untwists the end, revealing the place for the batteries. Inside are two rolled-up hundreds. He passes them to Stiles with a smile. “This was spur of the moment, right?” When Stiles nods, his dad smiles. “Good. Thanks for letting me know before you just took off. Be careful, you two.”
Stiles nods again and starts back up the stairs. “Thanks, Dad. Seriously, thank you. I’ll give you a hug when we come back down, I’m just gonna get some stuff.” He looks behind him and is grateful that Isaac doesn’t have to be told to follow again.
He pretty much just grabs whatever comfortable clothes he can reach and tosses them on the bed, preparing to make the blanket into a knapsack so he doesn’t have to lug a suitcase, not really. "Should we go by your place? So we can tell Ms. Stephenson that you’re not gonna be home for a while and you can get your toothbrush and whatever other shit you need? Chew toy to keep you satisfied? Special kibble?” He finally looks up at Isaac, mouth quirking up a little at his own joke, and the taller boy’s standing with his arms crossed, leaned partway against the wall, examining him. Stiles feels naked under his gaze, makes eye contact and raises his eyebrows. “Can I help you?”
“Why are you doing this?” It just pops out—Isaac has no way to stop it. What is even going on with Stiles right now? Isaac randomly says ‘I miss the beach’ and then suddenly they’re going? What?
“Just let me do this. Just. Just shut up and let me do it, okay?” Stiles suddenly looks like he’s close to crying.
It shuts Isaac up completely. “Okay.”
The ride to Isaac’s foster home is quiet and short. Ms. Stephenson eyes them when they show up and Stiles awkwardly asks if it’s okay if Isaac comes to the beach with him. She wraps her light sweater more firmly around her slim shoulders and just looks at him. It’s a mom look, she’s totally trying to get him to tell her whatever devious thing he’s really planning, and it’s bullshit because for once he’s not trying to lie. Her gray eyes make him squirm anyway. Her face softens a little when she looks at Isaac, though, so Stiles can forgive her. She speaks and its soft and gentle—kind of reminds Stiles of the way Scott talks to injured dogs. “Will you be safe? Will you call me?”
Stiles’s mind is totally blown. Why are they all going along with this? Why is his dad so ready to say yes, why is Ms. Stephenson? He shakes his head to clear it, and before Isaac can even start to answer he opens his mouth. “I have a timer set to call my dad every twelve hours once we’re there and I’m calling him every time we stop on the road—do you want me to get Isaac to call you then, too?”
She looks at him sharply, like an ultimate truth has just struck her in the face. “Your father is the Sheriff, isn’t he? Well, if that’s good enough for him it’s good enough for me.”
Isaac doesn’t have to say a word, and he doesn’t really want to. Ms. Stephenson makes him nervous. This whole house makes him nervous—it’s so bright all the time and so clean and it just looks plastic. Like a set from a TV show. He nods at her and goes into his room, pointing Stiles to the couch. He texts Derek that he’ll be out of town for a few days and immediately gets an ‘ok why’ back, but he has no idea how to answer that, so he just ignores it.
Isaac’s just about out of his room in less than five minutes, three t-shirts, two pairs of jeans, three pairs of socks and underwear and his swim trunks all pooled into his blanket and tied off like Stiles’d done, along with his toothbrush and shampoo and body wash and deoderant. Even though it’s June there’s always the chance it’ll be too cold to swim, that’s Northern California for you, but he’s not worried about the temperature; if Isaac gets to go to the beach he’s gonna swim, cold or not. He stops by the door, sets his bundle down, backs up to the closet. He reaches for his leather jacket, stops, feels the sleeve for a moment. A lot of awful shit has happened while he was in this jacket. A few good things, but mostly just awful shit. Isaac wants to step away from Beacon Hills for a while, not bring it with him.
He digs a ratty light blue-and-red plaid flannel jacket that was Cam’s when he was alive out of one of the suitcases he’s never even attempted to unpack and puts it on. It’s only lightly padded, it’s missing a button on the right cuff, and the lining on the left side has a few holes in it, but it’s old enough that it feels new to him. He doesn’t know how the button got lost or the lining got torn, not the way he knows how every stitch got pulled and how every nick got cut into his jacket. He’s wearing somebody else’s life right now, a life he wasn’t hugely involved in, and he doesn’t feel like he’s carrying a piece of Beacon Hills with him, or even a piece of his old home life. Cam’s been dead too long, and whatever memories this jacket held died with him. Isaac is grateful for it.
He misses the look on Stiles’s face when he walks out in it, misses the double-take he does and the way his mouth dangles open. Seeing Isaac wearing a different jacket shouldn’t be a huge thing, but it is. It’s amazing. It seems to wake Stiles up, to slap him in the face and remind him that Isaac Lahey was a person before the werewolf shit started, that Isaac Lahey is still that person, at least to some extent.
Isaac doesn’t miss the look Ms. Stephenson gives him, all pleasant surprise. She calls that he looks nice as he opens the door to leave, waving Stiles along.
He says ‘thank you’ demurely and by route and he does miss her smile. And Stiles’s.
They drive in silence for eighty miles.
Isaac doesn’t mention Stiles’s trembling or his silence.
Stiles doesn’t mention Isaac’s fidgeting, or the way the flannel jacket goes from having one missing button to having no buttons at all, not even on the front pocket flaps.
Isaac opens his mouth a few times, to ask how far they’ve gone, to ask how Stiles knows where they’re going, to ask if he can at least turn on the radio. He closes his mouth again each time—Stiles is the one who’s constantly talking, even if Isaac does tend to ask a ton of questions. Not today, though. Stiles’d asked him to shut up, so he doing it. Even though it was driving him crazy.
Stiles suddenly pulls over hard, stopping full and fast once they’re all the way off the road, and Isaac grips the Jeep’s door bar, looking over at Stiles, terrified. It didn’t matter how quick you could heal, turning over on an empty highway about forty miles from anywhere was not a good way to spend the afternoon. “Are you okay?” It’s out of his mouth before he can really think about the question and he kind of wants to laugh. It’s a stupid question—that’s why he’s never asked it before. Of course Stiles isn’t. None of them are. They probably aren’t ever going to be again.
Stiles puts the car in park, wraps his arms around the steering wheel like he’s hugging it, and turns his face towards Isaac, eyes huge in the wavering light—the sun’s going to dip below the tree line soon and they’ll be in shadow for a while before it goes pitch. Isaac’s not looking forward to it.
Stiles isn’t either. “I…no. No, I’m not. But that’s not why I stopped the car. Why did you come with me?”
Isaac looks at Stiles like he’s insane, and Isaac thinks they both might be. “Um. You’re going to the beach. And you asked everybody for me. And you told the truth to your dad about what we were doing. And I don’t hate you, and I really like the beach.” The light hits Stiles’s eyes just right and they could almost be glowing gold, and the world kind of dims around them for Isaac—he’s a little awed, he has no idea how they’re that color—aren’t they normally kind of a red-brown? “Can you tell me why you’re doing this now?”
Stiles’s eyes flicker closed and Isaac stares—his eyelashes are ridiculously long and dark and…pretty. It’s a weird word for him. He doesn’t think of things as ‘pretty’ so much anymore. Lately he thinks of things as ‘breakable’. Stiles opens his eyes again and Isaac’s lips quirk up without him realizing it, and when he does he leaves it alone, doesn’t force it back flat or twist it into a smirky grin. So what if Stiles sees him smile? He’d thought Stiles was going to talk, but Stiles just stares at him, at his mouth.
Stiles is thinking of a few things on Isaac as pretty, too, and he’s just as weirded out as Isaac. He finally finds his voice, though. “Yeah. Yeah, I can tell you that. I needed to get out of there for a little while. I haven’t done anything stupid in a while—beach sounded good.” He smiles at Isaac but misses the smile fading off Isaac’s face. Stiles straightens up and takes the car out of park.
Stiles carefully pulls back onto the empty road and starts driving again, realizing after about two minutes of silence what exactly he said. He scrubs a hand through his hair and thinks how to say what he’s thinking through before he lets more bullshit that’ll just offend Isaac more pour out.
“Shit. No. I didn’t mean it like—like doing this with you was stupid. Just doing this out of nowhere like this. That was probably dumb. I don’t even know how we pulled it off. I mean…I don’t hate you, either. You can be really nice.” Stiles is being overly critical of the road right now, so he doesn’t have to see how mad at him Isaac is.
Isaac leans his head against the cool glass, rolling a few buttons against each other’s edges in his hands, playing with them without realizing it. He hadn’t been offended or concerned or anything, he’d understood what Stiles’d meant, he just hadn’t really known what to say. “Yeah. You, too.”
It takes Stiles a minute to understand what Isaac even means, but when it clicks he smiles a little. “Cool. You hungry? I think there was an decent burger joint about ten miles ahead, if you wanna stop. We should call our wardens by the time we get done anyway. Does that sound good?”
“Sounds awesome. How do you know that, though?” Isaac has been paying meticulous and intense attention to the signs because he’s starving, had been for a few hours now, but it was hard to ask for food still, and he probably would’ve only mentioned it casually anyway. An ‘are you hungry’ thing, not a ‘please god can we get food I feel like my stomach’s eating itself’ thing.
Stiles smiles and tugs his phone out of his jeans without taking his eyes off the road. He tosses it into Isaac’s lap. “Pass code is 221B. There’s a Google Maps app open. Oh the wonders of technology.”
“Oh.” Isaac feels stupid—which is somewhat a usual occurrence around Stiles—and doesn’t put in the pass code, because it’s obvious Stiles knows where he’s going from here. Stiles reaches out and turns on the radio and Isaac lets himself get caught up in the music, some thrumming techno thing he vaguely remembers from computer commercials.
By the time they reach the diner they’re both smiling, a bit more relaxed, but still both half-waiting for the ax to fall, though neither will admit it to the other.
They eat and stretch and call their people and head back to the jeep, Isaac a little sleepy after eating so much to make up for accidentally fasting for the last few days. The road is long ahead of them, and night soon falls. Isaac hates being trapped in the car with so far to go still ahead of them, darkness and woods pressing on all sides with only an occasional town to break up the monotony. So when Help!,by The Beatles, starts playing, Isaac immediately starts to sing along.
Stiles has hummed and whisper-sung snippets but he hadn’t been sure if Isaac was one of those people who’d ask “Who sings this again?” and then do that awful thing where they say “let’s keep it that way” because that always makes Stiles want to stab someone.
Stiles jumps in by the second ‘help’ and Isaac looks over at him, grinning. They’re both kind of admitting something through the lyrics without realizing that the other is, too. They have pleasant voices, if not flat-out good, and Isaac gets into it completely, attempting every single high note (and actually hitting some). Stiles is delighted.
The next song is also one they both know, one everyone who’s ever been on a drive that lasts longer than three hours hopes to hear at least once—Bohemian Rhapsody. Isaac pauses on the first “Galileo” and lets Stiles take it, and from then on they alternate lines, giggling like idiots. Stiles is actually worrying himself a little with how often he’s looking over at Isaac, and he shakes his head and makes himself concentrate more on the road even as they both belt out every line. They wind up lining up tonally, with Stiles just slightly lower and Isaac just slightly higher than Freddie himself on the ‘nothing really matters to me’ and it sounds good enough that they both get goosebumps.
Classic rock may not be where Stiles is now in music, and it’s not exactly Isaac’s shtick anymore either, but it was, and it was for long enough that when they start to lose the radio station about an hour later they’re both disappointed, because they’d known pretty much every song.
Stiles fiddles with the radio until he finds something semi-melodic that doesn’t grate at him and is totally amazed at the look on Isaac’s face. His blue eyes are huge, the radio display making them easy to pick out in the dark as his hands fist and settle over his mouth, like he’s keeping himself from squealing. “They can’t seriously be playing this. Holycrap. Um. Do you wanna turn it up?” Isaac is grinning and Stiles just twists the dial, ratcheting it up a couple notches.
He has no idea what this is, but it’s definitely not classic rock. It sounds amazing, though, it’s making him want to dance and stomp around, it’s roiling through his body and every time the singer chimes in with ‘yeah I should more than know’ it makes him want to join in, even though he has no idea where it starts or stops, and there’s a mini-guitar solo that thrums in him, his heart is beating so fast and he’s bobbing his head and tapping his hand on the wheel, and he wants to listen to this song about eighty times because he wants to know it and be able to sing along and the lyrics, as they are revealed to him, make him feel like he’s blooming inside because they’re so fucking correct right now, they are out of control, and he’s grinning just as wide as Isaac and really getting into it by the time the song finishes, and he actually has to reach out and turn the radio off because holy shit he needs a second, nothing could really follow that, ohmygod. He’s actually breathing hard, that was spectacular.
Isaac’s beaming at Stiles, he hurts at how happy Stiles liking the song makes him. “They’re fucking awesome, right?” A swelling giggle pushes his way out of his mouth and he slaps a hand over it, hugely, helplessly happy.
“Dude. I need to start getting music from you, if this is what you listen to. Holy shit. They’re fucking incredible, who was that?” Stiles looks quickly from the road to Isaac and that look Isaac is giving him, like he’s the best person in the whole damn world, is making his heart twist up. Oh he wants that look. This feeling it’s giving him, like he matters, like he’s doing good for somebody. It hurts to look away and focus on the road. He doesn’t want to, but he also doesn’t want to wind up wrapped around a tree, so there’s not really a choice.
“Canterbury. They’re British indie, I don’t really listen to the radio but there’s no way—this is the coolest thing ever, this is so awesome! I can’t believe they got played and I heard them!” The fact is, Isaac really likes music, and he wants other people to hear the music he likes, and the fact that every other person who was listening just then heard his favorite song by Canterbury makes him really fucking happy, like too happy for words, like too happy to worry about showing how happy he is. It demands expression.
Stiles looks back at Isaac and he tries to memorize that smile before he has to look back at the road. He has never seen Isaac like this and there’s something seriously beautiful about it, about his enthusiasm. Stiles thinks he maybe started to see something like this that day he and Scott got into it about who the best Avenger was and Isaac had to chime in (Isaac basically has a huge boner for Captain America and every time Stiles thinks about it he has to laugh), but Isaac’d been restrained then, and now he just looked fucking elated. Stiles feels privileged to see it, and maybe that’s weird but it’s the truth. “I loved it. That was amazing. Completely totally amazing, Isaac. Like. Wow.”
Isaac can’t even really say anything, all he can do is grin and grin and grin endlessly. He wants to say ‘thank you’ but that doesn’t even make sense, wants to say ‘thank god’ but that’s kind of weird, too, but he doesn’t really have to worry about what to say because his lips and tongue just form words of their own volition; “I’m so glad.” It is kind of more than just a bunch of people having heard it that’s making him glad—it really is the fact that Stiles listened to it, with him, and liked it. Isaac feels like he won a prize or something.
They drive like that for almost ten minutes, neither one of them unable to stop smiling, just soaking in it, in the holyshitthatwassoawesome moment they’d just had.
Finally the dark starts pressing against the windows a little firmer and Isaac pipes up. “Uh. Do you want to—I mean, could we…”
Stiles has no idea what he’s struggling to say, why he doesn’t just ask whatever it is, and he’s still laughing and happy and unthinking when he says “Jesus, Isaac, just spit it out! What do you want from me, man?” The last part is over-exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness, and Stiles cocks an eyebrow at Isaac—it feels like they’re past this point. They got past it for Stiles after about the first hour of singing together and rolling their eyes at the commercials.
Isaac smiles back at him, swallows, and then makes himself. “Can I turn the radio back on?” He hates that it’s so grating, that it’s so hard to just ask a direct question, even to Stiles, who has proven time and time again that he’ll only ever playfully punch him and never on days he starts to flinch.
It’s weird, but Stiles feels like this is the first time they’ve gotten to that point. “Sure. Go ahead, dude.” He smiles at Isaac and Isaac smiles back and they keep this station all the way to the beach.
They do wind up staying at the RV park, mostly because Stiles makes Isaac call ahead and see if there’s a free space, and there totally is. Stiles calls his dad and Isaac calls his Ms. Stephenson and they get grilled on their arrangements. “You sure you’re gonna be safe sleeping in a car all night?” “You didn’t forget sunscreen, right?” “There’s a shower there and everything?” Stiles occasionally looks over and rolls his eyes at Isaac and Isaac smiles every time—it makes the whole thing go a little faster. Isaac is off the phone way faster than Stiles, and he pretends he can’t hear every word the Sheriff is saying (mostly stuff about how Stiles can’t say he’s unreasonable anymore), which Stiles appreciates.
Stiles sighs and leans back in the seat after he finally gets the Sheriff to let him go, and makes a promise to call back at 10 AM sharp instead of 10:30. Stiles turns eyes bright with interest to Isaac. “You ever been to Caspar Beach?”
Isaac shakes his head, eyes wide. He hasn’t been out of Beacon Hills in years and he doesn’t even know if he’d remember this place anyway—Caspar Beach RV Park is centered in a town a little smaller than Beacon Hills, but the beach is right there. He’s itching to get out of the car and run over, but Stiles sees it on his face and shakes his head.
“Dude, nuh-uh. Food first. We haven’t eaten for like three and a half hours hours. Google Maps me up a McDonald’s, would you?” Stiles tosses his phone to Isaac and Isaac lets it land on his lap again before picking it up. A question occurs to Stiles and he asks it without serious thought. “Hey—why didn’t you catch it?”
Isaac looks at him just as he ‘slides to unlock’ and the light from the phone gives perfect definition to Isaac’s face and totally takes Stiles’s breath away. Holy god his face is beautiful. The shadows cast by Isaac’s eyelashes are amazing.
Isaac swallows uncomfortably, not quite willing to say ‘because it’s not fair’. “Uh. Why didn’t you look up the McDonald’s yourself?”
Fair question. Stiles doesn’t really know. He goes for a joke instead of admitting it. “Just wanted to see your pretty face all aglow with the light from my phone, is all.” He laughs a little and shoves Isaac’s shoulder, and by some trick of the light Isaac’s face looks red. Like so red. Stiles giggles helplessly and squeezes his eyes shut on it, lifting his hands to cover his face because now he’s blushing because he made Isaac blush and this is just getting way out of hand. And hell, for all he knows he just gave the real reason.
But then he hears Isaac’s quiet “Nine miles away” and he doesn’t give a shit what kind of idea this was, because the thing itself is gonna be fucking awesome for both of them.
They go eat and Isaac insists on paying for Stiles, which would totally be weird if this was anywhere but McDonald’s. It might be a little weird anyway, but if it is Stiles pretends it’s not. They get milkshakes again, the same flavors, and Stiles teases Isaac relentlessly about it on the way back. At one point on the road he catches Isaac staring at him with his mouth open and he stops playing with his straw and looks over. “What?”
Isaac blushes to the roots of his hair and closes his mouth, turning his face away. “Uh. Nothing.” God, who taught him how to use a straw?
Isaac tries to sleep in the jeep, he really, really does, but in the end he just…can’t. He’s got to be able to stretch all his limbs out completely, and even with his seat bent all the way back so that it’s resting in the backseat it’s just not fucking happening. He gets out with his blanket and lays it beside the car, folding himself into it and passing out almost as soon as his head hits his pillowed arms.
He’s woken up by arms around him and he just sighs and cuddles closer before he realizes that in no version of his reality has that ever happened. He opens his eyes and prepares himself for a lot of things, the least scary being some creepy pedophile and the most a walking sharktopus that’s crawled out of the ocean and is trying to eat him.
He is not prepared for it to be Stiles. Stiles is shaking minutely and hugging him and Isaac pats at his back awkwardly, freaked out and a little worried. “Um…morning? You okay?”
Stiles pulls back and stares at him, arms wrapped around Isaac’s shoulders still, eyes huge. “Don’t fucking do that to me, man. I didn’t know where you went. Don’t do that.” Being four hours away from home and having to find a werewolf roving around in the woods is not Stiles’s idea of a fun mini-vacation.
Isaac stares back, acutely aware of his morning breath. “’K. Car got kind of small on me. Is it time to call the…uh…the wardens?”
Stiles sits back on his heels, shifting around to let his ass settle onto the gravel. How had Isaac slept out here? “No. No. We’ve got like an hour. Do you wanna go put on your swim trunks and stuff? McDonald’s again for breakfast?”
Isaac sits up, twisting his back from left to right and hearing it crack. “Sure. Sounds good. Um—did you bring water or anything? ‘Cause if not, we should get a couple bottles. And sunscreen up. Dunno how this wolf healing works with stuff like that, and I don’t really wanna find out.” He picks himself up and further cracks his spine before offering a hand to Stiles and hoisting him up to his feet.
Stiles tries not to be too obvious with watching Isaac as they drive on the roads overlooking the beach, headed back towards the RV park after an anxious hour of desperately quick eating and ‘shopping’ at a convenience store (for a cooler, ice, water bottles, some actual food, a small beach umbrella, fucking towels), but it’s hard. Isaac stares at the ocean with such bare want it’s a little astounding, and he actually looks relieved when the water hides behind the treeline again, though he keeps craning his neck to look at the openness of the sky. He’s wearing a thin, ratty t-shirt and gray-blue swim trunks that’re a little small, but Stiles can’t really talk—he’s wearing a washed-out enormous Mickey Mouse shirt he keeps exclusively for swimming and trunks that are a little too big. He’s lost a little weight over the last year, for reasons he’s not fucking thinking about right now. He is vaguely aware of the way Isaac’s stare doesn’t seem to relax when it turns to him, but intensify, and he doesn’t really know what to do with the information.
It’s quiet on the drive back to the RV park, but it’s not the same quiet that’d tried to choke them on the way in. The windows are down and Isaac’s hair is whipping around everywhere, and out of nowhere he starts laughing. Stiles tries not to stare at him like he’s fucking insane, but that's hard, too. Isaac somehow manages to choke out “didn’t bring a hairbrush” and Stiles cracks up, too, both laughing all the way down to the water.
The cliffs on either side of Caspar Beach’s curve don’t minimize the pull of the ocean for Isaac, not at all. Somehow having those contrasting monoliths (probably exaggeration, but the tallest thing he’s seen lately is a pine tree, so these are looking pretty enormous) anchoring the land to either side of the ocean just makes the whole thing look bigger and more real, and Isaac’s eyes grow huge trying to absorb it all, to etch it into the inside of his skull so when he closes his eyes he can feel along that imprint and relive it. This. The worn-denim sky eking down into the limitless blue horizon line, the sun trumpeting out of the sparse clouds and the way he can almost feel the curve of the sky around them. He feels so perfectly insignificant, so incapable of disappointing anyone, and before his toes even touch the water he is washed clean. He reaches out without thought and gropes the empty air beside him until he locates Stiles’ hand.
Stiles sucks in a sharp breath and threads his fingers through Isaac’s, just as lost in the heat of the sun and the glint off the water and the simple yet complex beauty of the day as he believes Isaac is. His skin already feels like it’s tightening despite the sunscreen, sweat is dripping in rivulets down his back, and he shivers when the wind picks up and chills the damp skin.
Isaac whispers, “Perfect.”
Stiles squeezes his hand. “I feel it too, man. I needed this.”
Isaac nods, still not actually looking at the boy beside him. “Yeah. Me, too. Bad.” He needed to be reminded that he was but a grain of sand on the edge of the water, tucked in beside uncountable other grains. He wonders for a second if he's having an existential crisis, but then shakes his head. Seventeen year olds don’t have existential crises. Crisises?
Stiles mutters “No, crises was right,” and Isaac realizes he said all of that out loud and almost swallows his tongue, starts to pull away from Stiles, but Stiles grips his hand. Isaac could still break away, could always still break away, and that’s good to remember even if it does make him kind of sad to think about, because he doesn’t really want to. “I think we’re in the perfect age group to have an existential crisis, though. I mean, I don’t like to think about how small we are, in the grand scale of things, don’t like to think about my actions not mattering, or the lack of control, and huge open spaces like this are kind of fucking terrifying if I think about it too much…”
Isaac smiles a little, consciously decides to share a part of himself this time. “Uh. Yeah. I am the complete opposite of that. I need to be reminded all the time how little I matter, or I get freaked out." He wants to mention the fear of disappointing people, but he can't quite bring himself to do it. It's not that he doesn't trust Stiles. It's just that some hidden things are harder to reveal than others. "Can’t sleep in small spaces. ‘S why I couldn’t sleep in the jeep.” He finally tears his eyes away from the seascape and looks Stiles in the face, and the breath is taken out of him. Stiles may not look particularly healthy out here, with his pale skin (because Isaac has room to talk) and the lavender bags under his eyes, but the eyes themselves are mystifying. They remind Isaac of the amber from Jurassic Park, sans mosquito, and he’s having some pretty fucking idiotic thoughts at the moment but it’s not like he can help it.
Stiles turns his eyes on Isaac fully and Isaac feels a confusing magmatic warmth puddle in his lower stomach at the fierceness of Stiles’ expression. “Well hey. You matter a lot to me, okay? I—does that bother you?”
Isaac swallows hard and decides to keep being as honest as he can bring himself to be, because he didn’t hear a skip in Stiles’ heartbeat and no one’s ever told him that before and Stiles is too beautiful to lie to in this moment. Who knows how long it’ll last, but Isaac doesn’t even want to lie to him. “Yeah. That’s the single most terrifying thing anyone’s ever said to me.” Stiles’ stricken expression does something else stupid to Isaac’s heart, and he reveals even more of himself to soothe it away, even though it feels like he’s peeling off skin. “But it’s also probably the best thing anyone’s ever said to me, so at least there’s that, right? Now c’mon. The ocean might be here forever, but we won’t.” He uses his hand on Stiles’ to tug him into the water, careful not to look at Stiles’ face, because he can’t handle it if he fucked it up and Stiles is mad at him or something.
Stiles’ expression feels unfathomable even to himself, but the truth is it’s his quietest smile.
They horseplay and splash and scream like idiots when they feel things that don’t seem quite like sand or rocks, but it’s all careful and oddly respectful, with no traditional ducking-each-other’s-heads-underwater or tossing-each-other-as-far-out-as-you-can that Stiles is used to and Isaac remembers vaguely from Cam, though Stiles does leap on Isaac’s back when Isaac’s not expecting it at one point and they both flop into a wave. Stiles expects Isaac to be mad or afraid or something, but Isaac just flips his drenched curls out of his face in a mermaid-like move that has Stiles’ heart rate and cock twitching in tandem, laughing even as he gulps air.
It’s getting dark by the time they manage to tear themselves away, both vaguely sunburnt, tight-skinned, salty, and exhausted, but in the best way they can remember being in a long time. They shower to get the sand off and the cool water feels like redemption on their skin. Neither of them are quite naive enough to believe that everything is fixed now, that just like that they’re best friends and they can talk to each other and share their fears and not feel so fucking alone all the time, no, neither one of them believes that…
But something close—perhaps not more, but close—may’ve happened here. Stiles senses it somewhere in his crotch region, whereas Isaac is getting a bit of an idea from his nose. They don’t talk about it as they grill hot dogs on the campground’s communal fire pit right by the bathrooms, Stiles teasing Isaac for burning his black but shutting up once Isaac asks him to try a bite, dropping his own hot dog back onto the grill for another couple minutes. They don’t talk about it as they talk about a million different movies, television shows, and books that they didn’t realize the other person liked. They don’t talk about it as Stiles insists that they rub after-sun lotion on their arms and necks and faces and Isaac scoffs until he sees how much better his skin feels. They don’t talk about it as Stiles spreads his blanket out beside Isaac’s, grumbling a little but getting as comfortable as he can as Isaac raises an eyebrow at him and tries to figure out what the hell’s going on.
Finally, as Stiles tucks an arm under his head and sighs overlong, eyes sparkling in reflected moonlight without so much as a word to Isaac, Isaac finds his voice. “Uh. Why’re you sleeping out here?”
“What? With you?” Stiles half-smiles at him and suddenly Isaac is breathing through a straw, god fuck holy shit he’s so attractive I don’t even know what to do with myself. Stiles shrugs and lets the hand closest to Isaac drop palm-up, just asking to be held.
Isaac grits his teeth and does it, prepared for Stiles to jerk his hand back, braced for it, and when it doesn’t happen Isaac sighs, eyes fluttering shut as Stiles rubs his thumb over the back of his hand gently.
“Don’t wanna make you sleep out here by yourself, dude.”
“But you don’t like wide-open spaces like this.” It’s just fact, but Isaac still winces as he says it, like it’s a presumption that Stiles is about to correct.
“Yeah. But if I don’t think about it too much, all I really know is that I’m laying down beside you, and well…that feels pretty big and important, keeps off the crushing feelings of uselessness and being tiny and all that. So.”
Isaac guesses this is them talking about it, and shifts so the line of his leg is barely touching Stiles’. “It does, huh?”
They both fall asleep with smiles playing on their lips, and wake tangled against one another, Isaac’s face against Stiles’ chest, mouth open and gaping, arms and legs wrapped snugly around him.
Stiles seems just as invested, and he actually woke up about half an hour before Isaac did, limbs cramping and back aching from the gravel digging into his skin, but didn’t move, because he was comfortable even if his body wasn’t. He felt safe, but even better, he felt like he was keeping Isaac safe, no matter how ridiculous or stupid that sounded.
They started back home a few hours later, Isaac refusing to leave before they took a final look and dip, so his hair was a little salt-heavy as they drove toward Beacon Hills. On the even patches of the highway, Stiles would reach over and hold Isaac’s hand, or Isaac would reach out casually and take his. They were back to not talking about it, but that was okay. At least they were doing it.
They talked about other things, and eventually those other things segued into each other, and them together as one. But of course, with as awkward as they had the potential to be, the talk was put off for almost two months, and dissolved into making out quickly.
But that’s another story.