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There are good hunts and bad hunts and then there are hunts like this one, which don’t quite end, that leave them with a sense of confusion and the feeling that everything is not entirely over, that they should keep their eyes open and wait for more. These hunts end with Derek crossing his arms over his chest and telling them to sleep light, if they can sleep at all.
Erica says that for her it’s much like an aura before the seizures, the hint of blood on her tongue. For Isaac, it’s more of a jittery thing, a constant thrum like an electrical current that starts from his stomach and spreads, and he jumps at cupboards slamming shut and doorbells ringing. (Stiles calls it hypervigilance and won’t explain what that means, but Isaac’s not stupid, he can pick the damn word apart and guess its etymology, and he says, yeah, I guess you could call it that.)
Stiles says that it’s just common sense. He doesn’t need auras or electrical currents to know he’s still in danger. Unless the thing they’re chasing is dead and six feet under, or alive in its human form and on their side, he’s gonna be on edge. It’s a pretty cynical way to look at things, and surprising, perhaps, for Stiles, but you don’t get to be the one human in a pack of monsters and stay alive without at least a bit of hard logic in you.
“Isaac.”
Stiles is looking at him from the middle of the kitchen. Isaac blinks and tilts his head, yeah?
“You okay?”
Isaac’s stomach is churning, half worry and half actual hunger- in the mess of the past two days all he’s managed to digest was a few bites of Stiles’ lunch when Isaac showed up at school to drag him away.
“Hungry,” he says. “Go to bed.” Stiles has been yawning for the past half-hour.
Stiles nods, but makes no move to leave the room. He walks to the fridge, opens it and takes out the pizzabox from the day before yesterday, chucks it on the table and pokes his head inside again. “Lettuce,” he says, “eggs and ketchup. Milk. Tomatoes. Rotten. Rotten tomatoes.” He snorts to himself, and Isaac grins at the kitchen tiles with his hands in his pockets.
Stiles sighs, something deep and tired.
“Jesus, dad leaves for two days and we end up living on plaster.”
Isaac can smell a strange scent on Stiles, has been smelling it for a while now. It’s something between discomfort and sadness, and he’s been trying to ignore for the past hours, because the whole smelling-your-feelings thing- it’s cheating. And it’s creepy. Stiles has the right to his own emotions, and he’ll share when he wants.
Isaac rubs the back of his neck. “Nah, no plaster for me yet. Pizza and milk,” he says, “like the good old days.”
Stiles gets the milk out, sets it on the table next to the pizza. He looks at their late late late night dinner and shrugs, and he’s got to be the one person that can communicate an apology with just the rise and fall of his shoulders. Isaac feels a violent surge of something going through him. It almost drowns out the panic. It drowns out nearly everything, actually.
Sometimes, Isaac catches glimpses of Stiles and he just thinks, fuck. This is one of those times.
They stick the pizza in the microwave and pass the milk carton back and forth while the meter counts down from 3:30. The room is slowly filling with the scents of cheese and pepper and bacon. They’re sitting on the table, shoes on their chairs, their knees are touching. Whenever the milk changes hands, their fingers brush. That’s all. Isaac wonders why, since he’s allowed to touch Stiles in other places, since he’s allowed to touch him everywhere, why isn’t he compelled to do it all the time. Like Allison and Scott, dragging noses against necks and touching fingertips like every diner booth and moldy floor and patch of wet grass is their own personal loveseat.
I don’t love you any less, he thinks at Stiles, a little panicky, and it’s a stupid thing to panic about with a succubus on their tails, but Stiles is human and he can’t smell Isaac’s love on him and Isaac could die today or tomorrow or in the next fifteen minutes and Stiles might never know. He wonders if Derek will tell him, after. Something like, he loved you, you know, he walked around stinking of his love for you.
It’s not a poetic way to put it. Isaac doesn’t mind.
On impulse, he leans over and rubs his face against the crook of Stiles’ neck with a whine, a quiet thing at the back of his throat that Stiles can write off as hunger, if he wants to. Stiles’ hand is almost in his hair when the microwave dings. The hand stops midway and drags down Isaac’s arm, from shoulder to elbow, and Stiles jumps off the table, goes to get their food.
They eat in relative silence, using their hands, no forks or knives or even plates, just their phones on the table front of them, and Isaac feels like it won’t be long before one of them comes to life, spelling out a place and an order to get here now.
“Perhaps there’s a thing, an, I don’t know, like a magnet-thing in Beacon Hills that’s pulling all the supernatural creatures over here, because there’s no other way I can explain it. I saw it in a movie once, I think.”
Isaac hums noncommittally. He’s never really been interested in Stiles’ quest for understanding why the hell they have a new creature visitor every three months or so . It’s enough for him that they show up, and that he has enough power to fend them off before they do any real harm.
“What’d you think?” Stiles asks.
Isaac’s hand hovers over the pizzabox, trying to find the slices with the most peppers, because Stiles doesn’t like those. He makes a calculating face.
“What if we’re in a TV series,” he offers, dropping his hand and sending Stiles a look through his eyelashes, mouth curled into a small, private smile. “Truman show, now with added werewolves!”
Stiles mouth opens, then closes, then opens again.
“You’re making fun of me.”
“I’m making fun of you,” Isaac nods. He has to fight the impulse to stick his tongue out, so he turns his attention back to the food. He points at two slices. “More peppers, this one or this one?”
Stiles points at a slice and Isaac grabs it. Stiles sighs puts his head on the table, his forehead on the varnished wood. Isaac tells him again to go to bed, and he grunts.
“Whatever, sleep here,” Isaac shrugs, licking his thumb. “See if I care.”
They’re quiet after that. At least until halfway through Isaac’s third slice, when Stiles lifts his head and looks at him with wide eyes. Isaac has a mouth full of reheated pizza and jerks back, frowns, what. what did I do.
Stiles points a finger at Isaac’s face. His own face is frantic.
“You’re eating the slices with the pepper because I don’t like them.”
Isaac frowns even deeper. “Yeah? I like pepper. So what.”
Stiles seems to be having a hard time processing this for some reason, and it’s weird but Isaac doesn’t worry because the same thing happened the time Lydia took a shower in their bathroom and Stiles fell on his bed and seemed to have lost all power from his limbs. He’ll snap out of it, eventually.
Stiles blinks a dozen times, and then he says, “you love me, don’t you.”
Isaac pauses with his lips around a piece of crust. Stiles is staring at him like he’s grown a second head and- and he should be terrified, shouldn’t he. He should, that’s what people do, they freak out when others figure out their weak spots, their bruises- but Isaac feels like laughing, choking on his damn pizza because out of everything, after everything, Stiles chooses to find out through fucking peppers.
“Why are you smiling?” Stiles snaps, his voice is angry and only a little tremulous, and Isaac wonders, can you feel the thrum now, can you feel the electricity, the panic- and that’s what makes him say, “it’s just peppers, man, not a marriage proposal. ”
“Fuck you,” Stiles spits. “Fuck you, do you love me, or not.”
Isaac opens his mouth to speak, but Stiles’ raised hand cuts him off, “no, you know what?” he pants, from calm to hyperventilating in two seconds flat, like he’s been running miles on a damn kitchen chair, “after werewolves and kanimas and vampires and succubi that thing with- with the wings, and the the three heads, you know what, no. Love me, or get out of my house.”
And then he’s out of his chair, he’s by the sink with his back turned and he’s got a hand pressed against his eyes, the other gripping the counter.
Isaac wants to feel panicked, as terrified as he should be about Stiles finding out, about Stiles freaking out, but he’s strangely at ease now. Like a thing has been dislodged in his chest, something that kept him from breathing like he wanted, a chunk of shrapnel still stuck in his lungs.
He looks at the line of Stiles’ shoulders through his white t-shirt, the delicate arch of his neck, his slender waist. He hears him breathing heavily, and he thinks, fuck.
“I took a bullet for you,” he says. “And I eat your peppers.”
Stiles exhales.
Isaac doesn’t mind, he can say I love you. He suspects he said worse stuff to Stiles when he was drugged out on Deaton’s table, he might have proposed or offered his heart straight from his chest, you can have it if you want, it’s yours for consumption.
I love you is nothing.
“Yes,” he goes on, “I-”
Stiles cuts him off. “The peppers thing,” he says. “You can keep. Keep doing that.” The hand that was pressing against his eyes has now migrated to the back of his neck, pressing gently. Isaac wants to pry it away, kiss it maybe, but he knows when to give Stiles space.
He waits.
“You’ve got to stop the bullets thing,” Stiles says in the end.
Isaac grins and drops his head. “Well.”
When Stiles’ hands come, he’s more or less expecting them. Stiles pulls his face up, digs his fingers into Isaac’s hair and brings his head back, back, exposing his neck. They stare at each other. Stiles’ eyes are a little red.
“You weren’t gonna cry, were you, crybaby?” Isaac teases, and he knows Stiles will smile because this is like Stiles calling him hyperactive. Isaac cried during Teen Mom last week.
Stiles doesn’t point that out. He lets it go. He strokes Isaac’s hair with clever fingers, leans in to press their foreheads together. Isaac holds on to him, his hip and his shirt and his scent, he breathes in deep. They rock together silently, back and forth, like a lullaby, and when they start kissing, Isaac knows they won’t pull away for a while.
The first time Isaac’s phone rings, they don’t even hear it.