Archive of Our Own

Isaac doesn’t really have a choice. 

Of course, he could stay in Beacon Hills. He could go to school, attend class in the rooms where he’d first met Scott and his friends, walk through the parking lot where Allison had hotwired Ethan’s bike and showed him how to ride it, her hands warm and gentle atop his own. He could pass Derek’s building every time he has to go downtown; remember the way Boyd looked impaled on Derek’s claws; recall Erica’s desperate, futile fight against Kali in the old bank vault. He could stop by the cemetery on his way out to Deaton’s clinic, pay homage to Kate Argent and her now-occupied grave where this entire fucking circus had started for him.

Beacon Hills has too many ghosts, too many people lost. His father’s dead, Allison’s dead, Erica’s dead, Boyd’s dead. Derek’s still alive, but Isaac can’t forget the role he played in all those deaths, can’t forget the sound of the whiskey glass shattering on the support beam above his head. He knows Derek was pushing him away for his own protection just as he knows that none of it was truly Derek’s fault. 

Still…Isaac can’t stay. He’d never been close to any of their little ragtag pack besides Allison and Scott, and right now his only tether to Beacon Hills is mired in grief and guilt. He can’t make Scott his only connection to the place, can’t force Scott to be his only support when all he needs is support of his own.

So he leaves.

“Six AM,” Argent tells him, poking his head around the doorway where Isaac’s packing all the meager possessions he owns into the same lacrosse bag he’s dragged around with him since his father’s death. He nods in response but doesn’t look up simply because the cold detachment in Argent’s eyes is more painful to see than any amount of bereavement. Lingering in the doorway a moment longer, Argent opens his mouth like he wants to say something. No words come.

A second later he’s silently stepping away.

Isaac only has two people in the world he really cares to say a proper goodbye to. He’ll at least text Derek before he gets on the plane and if he’s feeling up to it he might even try to explain why he’s leaving, but the prospect seems unlikely. For now, he just pushes through the doors to Beacon Memorial Hospital with plastic bag in hand.

It’s slow, thankfully, but Melissa’s not at the front desk. Isaac sees the tall, dark-skinned woman working reception and gives a crooked little smile at the way her eyes light up in recognition. “Isaac Lahey,” she says, laughing, and maybe the fact that the ER nurses recognize him on-sight says something fucked up, but this woman had always made him feel comfortable those dozens of times he’d ended up here.

“Hey, Nurse Ayubu,” he says. He knows his voice comes out flat, dull, but she’s kind enough not to mention it.

“Aside from some notable recent incidents, I haven’t seen your name in our records very much.” The look she’s giving him, written through with sympathy, rounds out the sentiment she’s not callous enough to say aloud. Haven’t seen you here much since your father bit the dust. 

Isaac can only shrug in response to that, fighting the urge to curl his shoulders in on himself as an uncomfortable itch crawls its way up the back of his neck.

“Is, uh, Melissa here?” He knows for a fact that she’s working tonight, but he doesn’t know how else to segue the conversation.

“What, that’s not for me?” Nurse Ayubu jokes with a little nod to the takeout bag he holds, but doesn’t give him the time to respond before she’s paging Melissa.

Scott’s mom appears so quickly Isaac’s sure she must have run. He doesn’t have time to put down the dinner he’d brought, barely has a chance to brace himself before she’s wrapping her arms tight around him, rocking them both backwards with the force of the hug. Isaac’s chest feels tight and he really doesn’t want to cry in the middle of the hospital’s reception area so he pulls away from the embrace as gently as he’s able. Melissa looks up, searching his face, and she must see the desperation, the sorrow, the rawness, because she very firmly informs Nurse Ayubu that she’s taking five before tugging him by the wrist to a blissfully empty break room.

Melissa shuts the door behind them but Isaac doesn’t take a seat. He just stands there in the middle of the room, suddenly feeling so lost. 

He doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to move his own limbs anymore through the crushing ache that’s settled into his very bones. Gentle fingers pry the bag from his hands and he hears it set down on the table, never taking his eyes off his own sneakers.

“Isaac, look at me.”

Melissa puts enough command into her tone that he almost does, but he knows the kindness in her dark eyes would remind him too much of Scott right now. He blinks slowly around the tears he feels coming, hot behind his eyes, then before he even realizes what’s happening he’s sinking to the floor, caving in on himself, and Melissa’s there, hands on his shoulders as she moves to the floor with him and murmurs, “Oh, honey.” Considering the even eight inches of height between them, Isaac doesn't understand how such a small woman can wrap him so securely in her arms, enveloping him in this loving blanket of safety and insulating him from the rest of the world for however brief a time. Deep down he suspects she’s always been more capable of protecting him than he is her, despite the bone-crushing strength in his hands and claws that can tear through kevlar like it’s silk.

He’s not sure how long they stay there, linoleum cold beneath them, Isaac’s forehead resting in the crook of her neck as they breath together. “I’m leaving,” he eventually says, directing it at the neckline of her scrubs because that’s easier than telling her to her face, though he can still feel her arms tense around him.

“With who?”

Of course. Of course she doesn’t say why or where or stay… just who? There are so many loving sentiments hidden within that word: it’s her way of asking Will you be alone? and Will you be safe? 

Isaac swallows around the lump in his throat. “Argent. He’s going to France to…regroup, I guess. I don’t have anywhere else to go so…”

He lifts his head and disentangles himself from Melissa’s arms only for her to grasp his face with both hands and keep him where he is. Her expression is insistent, intense, as she tells him, “You will always have a place here with us, Isaac, should you want it.”

“I know,” he says, and he means it, but he also knows he can’t stay with Melissa. The McCall household was the closest Isaac’s ever gotten to feeling at home, but Melissa can barely put food on the table when it’s just the two of them and Scott just lost the love of his life and the last thing they needed was another grief-stricken phantom wandering a too-silent house, another mouth to feed, another inconvenience. 

Sitting on the floor feels a little bit ridiculous now so Isaac drags himself to his feet and offers a hand up to Melissa. They settle in at the break room table and Isaac pushes the bag he’d brought across to her. “I got you dinner,” he offers with a shrug, unsure how else he can move the conversation along.

Laughing a little, Melissa opens it and takes a look inside. “Thank you, hon.”

“It’s kind of the least I could do after everything. I don’t—” He cuts himself off, runs a hand through his hair, lifts one shoulder in a helpless gesture. “I don’t know how to thank you enough.”

Nudging aside the food, Melissa reaches across the table and takes his hand. “I only gave you a fraction of what you’ve always deserved. You drew a shitty lot in life, kid, I’ll tell you that, but I have never seen anyone with resilience like you.”

Now Isaac really doesn’t feel like crying again but he still has to swipe the back of his hand across reddening eyes. “I didn’t just mean a place to stay. It’s also — I know Scott wouldn’t be who he is today without you. I was going to kill his friend and he still trusted me and cared about me. I barely even knew the guy but there he was looking at me like I mattered and telling me he didn’t want me to get hurt—”

Mortified, Isaac clamps his mouth shut. He knows he’s rambling, knows how nonsensical that must’ve sounded, but how the hell do you tell someone thank you for creating and raising and shaping the first and last person I’ll probably ever love like that? To her credit, Melissa doesn’t look surprised. She has that look on her face that reminds him of all those months ago in the hospital when she’d asked him if he had any other “emergency werewolf contacts.” Call Scott he’d said, and he’d known in that moment what his expression was giving away because her eyes had softened around the corners in a kind of understanding.

A distant, nagging voice at the back of Isaac’s head reminds him of the danger, the loaded gun he just put in Melissa’s hands, but he knows deep down that she wouldn’t use his heart against him like that. The only person who would ever care has been six feet under for almost a year now — somehow the most peaceful year of Isaac’s life, even with the constant supernatural mania going on. Digging into his coat pocket, he unearths the envelope he’d felt burning a hole through his clothes all afternoon and slides it across the table to Melissa. “It’s for him.”

Her face falls flat so fast that Isaac almost flinches, her lips pressing into a thin line. She doesn’t say anything, just returns the envelope without even a look.

Isaac opens his mouth, shuts it again; frowns and glances down; settles for a baffled silence in the face of Melissa’s evident disappointment. When he doesn’t say anything else she heaves a sigh and says, “Tell him.”

“Tell him what?”

“That you’re leaving!” The exasperation in her voice hides something very fond, and Isaac pushes down the little wrenching feeling in his chest. “You think it’ll be good for him to learn via letter that one of his closest friends left town and didn’t look back?”

“He’s mourning Allison. I can’t do that to him.”

“But you are, Isaac. You are doing this to him.” It hurts, but she’s right. She leans forward a little to catch his eyes, the affection in her gaze offsetting the sting of her words as she adds, “I know you’re leaving because you feel like you need to, and I don’t fault you for that, but a letter is going to hurt him far more than a proper goodbye would.”

She’s right, of course. She always is. It’s how Isaac finds himself standing outside Scott’s bedroom door with his hand poised to knock, remembering vividly the last time he’d been here, dripping rainwater all over the floor. Those few intervening weeks feel like years.

“Come in,” Scott says. Isaac hasn’t knocked yet, hasn’t done anything to really indicate his presence, but his racing heart probably gave him away the moment he set foot on the front walk. The door hinges squeak in quiet complaint, same as they had that first time, but instead of doing homework at his desk, Scott’s sitting cross-legged atop his duvet with a pillow clutched to his chest. He looks kind of miserable, but Isaac’s not sure he’s doing any better.

“How are you doing?”

“Well, I’m leaving, so…” Great, Isaac. Way to break the news. “Sorry. I’m — I’m okay I think. You?” He hates how awkward this is. They haven’t seen each other since the funeral (nearly three days ago now) and suddenly they’re stepping on eggshells. Isaac doesn’t want this to be the last conversation they have for God-knows-how-long, so even though he’s never been the best at this kind of thing, he knows he has to try. “Can I sit?”

Scott nods to the desk chair but Isaac sits on the edge of the bed anyways, long limbs tucked up out of Scott’s space. “I’m sorry it took me so long to come see you.” There, get that out in the open at least.

Scott’s shoulders lift in an easy shrug. “It’s okay, we all have to grieve in our own ways. Besides, talking goes two ways.”

“Yeah.” It’s Isaac’s turn to shrug, unconvinced. “It’s different for you, though. What you had with her was…more. Deeper.”

“Don't say that.” The sudden ferocity in Scott’s gaze, the way he leans into Isaac’s space, is startling. “It’s not a competition. You deserve to mourn her too.”

Everyone knew Scott and her had something special, something uniquely, painfully once-in-a-lifetime even if it hadn’t worked out: it was a realization Isaac long since stopped letting hurt him. Besides, Scott apparently forgets that Isaac has supernatural hearing too, and that being a full twenty five yards away hadn’t made it any more difficult to hear Allison’s dying confession of eternal love. Scott flinches as though he can read Isaac’s mind, guilt flickering across his face, but before he can get it in his head to apologize for something nonsensical, Isaac shakes his head. “She was your first love, Scott, that’s huge. I’m not suggesting—” He cuts himself off, considering his next words, before settling on, “I’m just sorry I wasn’t here for you.”

Then Scott’s leaning further forward somehow, so close that there’s no way he doesn’t hear the rapid uptick in Isaac’s heartbeat. “So stay.” His brown eyes are beseeching as they roam over Isaac’s face, earnest and sad. “You’ll always have a place here.”

It’s so close to what Melissa said that Isaac’s resolve almost crumbles right then and there, except he knows he can’t burden the McCalls like that, can’t keep wandering this graveyard of a town seeing dead faces on every corner. He’ll always have a place with Scott, but Beacon Hills is no longer home.

“You’ve given me so much,” Isaac says, sure the raw truth of it all is written clear across his face, “but I have to leave.”

“Where?”

“France, with Argent.” His fingers twitch with the urge to reach out and take Scott’s hand. “It’ll be a fresh start, I think.”

Scott’s brows pinch together, forming a furrow that Isaac wants nothing more than to smooth away. “For how long?”

A shrug is all Isaac can offer. He doesn’t know if it’ll be weeks, months, years… it’s as frightening as it is freeing. Before he knows what’s happening, he’s being pulled up off the bed into the biggest bear hug of his life. He’s not much of a hugger, never has been, but he still wraps his arms around Scott, hunching his shoulders so he can bury his face in the warmth of Scott’s neck and inhale his scent deep. Maybe it’s weird, maybe it’s just a werewolf thing.

“Be careful, okay?” Scott says into his shoulder.

Ah, I doubt I’ll even slightly hurt him. 

No, I mean you. I don’t want you to get hurt. 

That had been the first time in years that Isaac felt real concern from someone who wasn’t obligated to help him one way or another. It was also, semi-coincidentally, the first time he really clocked the nature of his feelings for Scott, standing there under the flashing blue lights with the phantom sensation of Scott’s hands brushing his.

And then Scott’s letting him go. Physically, from the hug, but he’s also looking up at him with an expression of sorrowful acceptance that says he’s not going to fight him on leaving. A selfish little part of Isaac wants him to, but he knows that’s not Scott’s style just as much as he knows he can’t be harangued into staying for his sanity’s sake. “You too.”

There’s a long bout of silence. It’s deafening, somehow. Scott’s looking up at him but his gaze seems fixed in the middle distance, his attention diverted by the troubles roiling behind his eyes. Isaac digs his nails into the meat of his palms, pressing his lips together to keep back words he doesn’t even know how to say. It’s like every survival instinct has fled him, every single wall he’s ever built up happily disassembling itself as his eyes roam freely over Scott’s face…Memorizing, searching, bleeding sincerity and love and everything else he’s kept stuffed away until now.

Allison had known. She’d asked him about it one day in study hall, her curious, discerning expression not faltering at the way his shoulders had gone up around his ears. Taking that for the answer it was, she’d laughed softly. “I can’t judge,” she’d said, cheeks dimpling, “He’s almost impossible not to love.”

“You broke up with him,” Isaac returned, more a question than an accusation, and earned himself a heavy sigh in response.

“Love’s never as simple as we want it to be. It’s not always enough, either.”

God, is it ever enough?

Isaac fishes in his pocket for the letter, now a little creased in its envelope. “I uh— I wrote this in case I didn’t get a chance to say bye.”

Scott takes it from him, frowning pensively at the scrawl of his own name across the front. “But you’re here.”

“Sure, but the letter’s still for you.” Isaac laughs softly; not at Scott, just at the situation. At himself, maybe. “Look, I’ve gotta go. We’re leaving early tomorrow.”

“Yeah, of course.” Scott’s still frowning, but he’s looking up at him again. “Don’t be afraid to write us from France, though.”

“You want me to snail-mail my correspondence all the way from Europe?” Isaac can’t help but tease, and he’s rewarded with a small smile.

“Text, email, whatever. You know what I mean.”

“I will. Try not to get into too much trouble while I’m gone, though.”

Scott’s smile grows a little, some of his old self creeping back through his voice when he says, “I’ll save some bad guys for you. I wouldn’t want to deprive you of a good fight.”

Isaac’s tempted to stand here all night trading banter back and forth, but instead he goes in for another quick hug. “Goodbye, Scott.”

For all the finality of goodbyes, there’s something unfinished here. He’ll be back, he’s sure of it, but for now it’s high time he put Beacon Hills in his rearview mirror.

They spend a few weeks in Paris getting Argent’s affairs in order, but after getting in contact with some distant family (the L’Ors — Isaac had laughed, but apparently the name was a coincidence and not a laughing matter, as his amusement was met with steely silence) they headed down south. It turns out that allying with werewolves is frowned upon among the hierarchical Old World hunters, even with a name like Argent, so they distance themselves from much of the family and settle in Lyon among more lenient friends.

Isaac feels terrible, like his presence is disrupting Argent’s life even more than it already has been, but Argent reassures him that his bloodthirsty child-murdering days are behind him. He doesn’t use those words, exactly, but Isaac gets the gist.

They fall into a rhythm. Isaac goes to school, struggles for a while until his French catches up but otherwise it’s fine. He gets used to saying Chris instead of Argent and they warm up to each other in a tentative kind of way, like a stray alley cat learning to trade affection for meals. Chris keeps up the arms dealing and the hunting, though the supernatural situation in Lyon is pretty tame compared to Beacon Hills so he travels a lot. He tries to keep Isaac out of it, insisting he focus on school, but Isaac doesn’t take well to being benched and eventually they reach a compromise — Isaac can help, but school comes first. 

Isaac surprises himself by making a friend, though it might be more apt to say that the friend made him: on his third day in school, a lean, willowy girl plops down next to him and says, in English, “You know, I’ve never met an American werewolf.”

Camille is her name, and she’s as sly and long-legged a human as she is in her vulpine form. They do homework together, eat lunch together, laze around her apartment watching TV together. She refuses to come by his place no matter how many times he insists Chris is okay, but his affiliation with the most notorious hunter family in Europe doesn’t seem to faze her outside of that. Once Isaac gets the hang of driving stick-shift, he drives them two-and-a-half hours out into the wilderness where they camp for a night or two at a time, making use of the seclusion to shift without worry, to run freely through the woods chasing the high of endorphins and the pleasant ache of muscles finally used to their limit. Lyon is nice, but it’s only during those nights in the woods that Isaac really feels like he could call this place home.

Another one of those nights is waning into morning when Camille rolls onto her side and asks, “How are you this strong?”

There’s a small fire crackling between them, its warmth unneeded but welcome, and in the orange glow Camille’s eyes look less gray, more like the burnt orange she wears as a fox. Isaac frowns, searching her expression for a long moment. “What do you mean?”

“From what I know, omegas are the weakest of the wolves. The way you run, the way you heal…you have the strength of a pack wolf.”

“Well…I have a pack.” Isaac hates how hesitant the words sound coming out of his own mouth. Even in his second tongue, he can hear the uncertainty.

Camille pushes herself up onto one elbow. “In America, though.”

A wild, wide-open feeling splits Isaac’s chest, like the whole expanse of the Atlantic has flooded its way into his heart. “I’m sorry,” Camille says in a rush, reading either his face or his scent, “But us foxes aren’t pack animals. I was only trying to understand.”

“So am I.” Staring into glowing embers like they have the answers, Isaac digs deep, burrowing past the cold loneliness to that tiny, thready heartstring he never stopped feeling. It’s there, despite all the time and distance between him and everyone else, but he’s always afraid he’ll wake up one day and find it gone. There’s another beside it, tattered and weak and missing two ends; that one he knows will remain until he or Derek is dead. “You know I left my first alpha, the one who bit me, but I still feel him, too. I guess being without my pack just isn’t the same as being pack-less.”

Camille’s lips twitch upwards. “All this alpha and beta nonsense. I think I like being a fox just fine.”

Derek’s pursuit of power. The crack of the bond when Erica and Boyd died. The Alpha Pack’s brutal recruitment campaign. “Yeah, it sounds simpler,” he allows. “I’d have a few less problems without it.” There’s only a brief beat of silence before a thought occurs to him. “So any fox can make a fox?”

Camilla flops back down to the ground, leaves rustling. “In theory. The bite is more likely to take the longer you’ve been a fox, and born foxes have better success turning others.” She pauses, looking up at the night sky for a long moment before she adds, “And you have to die.”

“Die?” Isaac questions, aghast. For all the pain the bite has brought him, that feels like one step too far.

“Mhm. Either the bite itself has to be deadly, or you have to already be dying. My grandfather was in the trenches in World War II, and he was turned by a man in his squadron when he got shot.”

“God. Kind of like a vampire, though, no?”

The affront that splashes across Camille’s face tells him what she thinks of that comparison. Isaac laughs. 

Isaac’s eighteenth birthday dawns sticky-hot, unseasonably so. Chris is out of town, but he’d been apologetic about missing Isaac’s birthday and gave him his present early, which was both overwhelming and wholly surprising given that Isaac’s pretty sure he never mentioned his birthday once. Birthdays stopped being a big deal in the Lahey household after Cam died and any gifts from his father usually came with stipulations, so a couple of books and one of Allison’s engraved arrowheads had almost sent Isaac into tears. 

The next few weeks swim by. School, work, travel, Camille…it all grinds to a screeching halt in the early hours of an otherwise innocuous Wednesday as Isaac’s pulled from sleep by a hard tug behind his ribs.

He shoots up in bed, immediately doubling over as something in his chest goes tighter, tighter, tighter. A familiar feeling. “No,” Isaac murmurs into the dark of his room, right before he feels the tension snap. 

One stunned, excruciating moment passes before he recognizes what the sudden absence of pain means. He’s up and out of bed without even knowing what he’s doing, pulling on the first pair of jeans he finds on his floor. He’s rifling through his top drawer looking for his passport when a wedge of light illuminates the room — Chris.

Isaac. The voice comes in faint, echoing, and Isaac ignores it as he pockets his passport and starts digging around for car keys. 

“Isaac!” There’s two hands on his shoulders, solid and strong as Chris turns them face-to-face. “What’s wrong?”

“Scott’s dead.” His voice cracks on the second word.

Chris’ eyes drop to his chest like he can see where that bond hangs broken. When his gaze flicks back up, there’s no hesitation, no questioning, no are you sure? “I’ll drive,” is all he says, and that’s that.

They’re still four miles out from Lyon-Saint-Exupéry when a very distinct heat he can only describe as electric shoots from his spine to his sternum. It is, unfortunately, not a new sensation for Isaac, although the localized, white-hot jolt feels more like a hunter’s baton than the full-body agony of a live wire. As his vision flickers between human and wolf and his nail beds rupture to make way for claws, Chris peels into the shoulder of the road and slams on the brakes. “Isaac,” he says again, speaking for the first time since they’d gotten into the car. He doesn’t touch him this time, but the concern in his voice is underlined with a militant sternness that helps pull Isaac back from whatever brink he’s on.

“I think—” He pauses, clears his throat, tries again. “I think he’s back. Alive.” Almost hysterically, he starts to laugh. Was this what Scott had felt when Braeden revived Isaac with fucking jumper cables? If so, this is karmic balance of the worst degree.

“Alive?” Chris echoes, white-knuckling the steering wheel. “Or did another Alpha take his place?”

“No.” Isaac’s not sure where his certainty comes from beyond a pure, deep-rooted instinct. That’s Scott on the other side, the bond tenuous and newly-forged but as familiar as anything Isaac’s ever known. “He’s there.” The relief is palpable, but it barely outweighs the anxiety and the fear and a lingering, consuming sense of loss as everything crashes down at once. He needs to close his teeth around the throat of whoever — whatever — did it. He needs to rip and tear and kill. He needs to see Scott, alive, with his own two eyes, to touch him, to feel that powerful heartbeat under his palm. 

“I should be there. I should’ve—”

“Hey.” Chris does reach out this time, tentative, though it’s been a while since Isaac flinched from his touch. “We’re going now. Twelve hours, then we’re back in Beacon Hills.”

“I sh—” Isaac cuts himself off, his teeth grinding as shame and fury war for prominence in his ragged, racing heart.

“Hey,” Chris says again, more forcefully. “It’s not your fault, okay? It’s not. Twelve hours, then whatever’s going on in Beacon Hills, come hell or high water, we’ll deal with it.”

They make it to a terminal with twenty minutes to spare before the five-AM flight, at which point Chris marches off to call someone; Melissa, Stilinski, whoever picks up their phone first, probably. Isaac takes that time to listlessly open up his email, scrolling through until he finds his last exchange with Scott. Two weeks ago. With a rising sense of dread, Isaac realizes one of the last things he could’ve ever said to Scott was terminated with a gif of fucking Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf. 

Once they’re on the plane, Chris gives him the lowdown from Melissa. Chimeras, immortal steampunk doctors, an old Beacon Elementary classmate turned killer. None of which Scott had deigned to mention in any of his emails. Isaac tries not to let that hurt.

“Did you know this Raeken kid?”

“Oh. Uh, Sort of.”

Theo exists in the dreamy, happier memories of Isaac’s childhood, those strained yet peaceful years before Isaac found out what Camden was dealing with day-in and day-out. He sort of knew, he’d hear their arguments, but Cam was always good at hiding his bruises and their father still possessed one last little modicum of restraint. That all died with Cam.

“Did she say what happened?” To Scott, he means. Chris doesn’t ask for elaboration.

“She was staying tight-lipped about that.” Chris’ tone tells Isaac that he, too, finds that strange, but there’s nothing worth speculating on that they won’t find out in ten hours.

Two dozen more bodies pile up in Beacon Hills before the Doctors and their pet Beast are dealt with. Mason’s obviously worse-for-the-wear and Liam’s acting weird and although it’s been a good two weeks, nobody will tell Isaac what killed Scott beyond Theo. 

It’s a lie of omission, if anything, and it’s infuriating. 

Finally, he gets tired of confronting people who only dodge around the topic and he goes to the one person who’ll reliably be straight-up with him. Though she’s hesitant to betray Scott’s trust, it takes minimal wheedling to get answers.

“It was Liam,” Malia tells him, matter-of-fact. “Theo used the supermoon to turn him on Scott, then he finished the job himself once Scott was injured.” She cocks her head in a decidedly animalistic movement, bangs falling in front of one eye. “They didn’t tell you because they were worried you’d hurt Liam in retaliation. I don’t think you will.”

That stings; not Malia’s trust in him, but the others’ lack of it.

“What makes you say that?”

Malia studies him with an unnervingly level gaze, then shrugs. “You care what Scott thinks of you.”

Well, that’s an unsettling read from somebody he’s known for a total of fifteen days. “So do you,” he shoots back, unsure why he’s suddenly feeling so defensive.

“Uh…yeah,” Malia says slowly, squinting at him like he’s an idiot for stating the obvious. “You were there the day he turned me back.” Isaac blinks. It’s not a question, but Malia’s face settles into a frown like she’s waiting for an answer.

“...I was,” he replies, unsure if his involvement in the matter is going to earn him a fuck you or a thank you. Neither, as it turns out.

“I could smell you on him. Not anymore, not for a long time but…even though I don’t know you, I think I can feel you right here.”

And she taps one soft, short nail against her heart.

Isaac’s laying face-up on what used to be his bed when there’s a soft knock at the door. He stays silent, waiting Scott out until he hears a dejected sigh and the diminishing shuffle of bare feet on carpet. To his credit, Scott doesn’t try again for another two hours. “Mom’s at work but there’s ziti in the oven. I’m gonna eat in like ten minutes if you want to join me.”

He thinks briefly about ignoring the olive branch, but his stomach growls a timely reminder right before he hears Scott pull dinner from the oven. He’s really not trying to sulk (or stew, or mope, or any of that) but the hours of trying to sort through his feelings have gone nowhere. He’s angry, but it’s hard to pinpoint how much of that is directed towards himself or everyone else. He’s disappointed. A little ashamed, a little betrayed, very useless. It’s a lot to be feeling on an empty stomach.

Despite his hunger, once he’s seated across from Scott he finds himself gnawing on his own lower lip more than the food. Scott’s obviously trying to keep his concern to himself, which is very nice of him but it also means that he’s exuding the same energy as an anxious chihuahua. Finally, Isaac sets his fork down gently and says into the strained silence, “Okay. What?”

Scott’s eyes shoot up from his plate, earnest and kind and so endlessly, beautifully, dark. “Are you okay?”

“Are you?” Isaac challenges, feeling a little twinge of anger at Scott’s surprise. When was the last time anybody asked him that? “Seriously. You had your memories wiped, your girlfriend left to pursue a magical education, half your friends almost died, and you did die. At the hands of your own beta, no less. Are you okay?”

His wince leaves Isaac wondering if he pushed too far, but Scott doesn’t break eye contact. “They told you.”

Isaac picks up his fork and pokes at a noodle just for something to do. “Yeah,” he says, eyes dropping to the table. “And I get why you didn’t trust me, but…” Another noodle victim; another long second of studying the table’s wooden grain.

But it still hurts. 

A hand closes over Isaac’s unoccupied one, solid and warm, and Isaac barely resists the urge to jump out of his skin. It’s not a fear response, but a reaction to proximity, intimacy.

“I do trust you. So does Lydia, Stiles, even Malia.”

“Stiles trusts me?” Isaac prods, dry as anything.

Scott’s face screws up, head tilting in a “more-or-less” motion. They both understand that that’s the best he’ll get with Stiles and don’t linger on the topic. “It was Mason,” Scott explains. “He was the one who talked Liam down during the supermoon, and when he found out you were coming…” Scott squeezes his hand gently. “He’s been through a lot, and he only wanted to protect his best friend.”

Scott’s pulse betrays the same honesty that’s painted across his face, but Isaac still has to ask. “You swear?”

“I swear.”

Truth. 

Pulling his hand back, Scott takes a deep breath. “And I’m not okay, not right now. But I will be.”

Truth. 

“For what it’s worth, I really am sorry about Kira,” Isaac says, because whatever his own feelings for Scott might be, he really did like her, even way back during junior year. She was totally and unapologetically herself, always, and as a world-class builder of emotional walls, Isaac admires that trait. It reminds him of someone else he knows.

Scott spears a noodle, chews it thoughtfully, then shrugs one shoulder. The gesture seems careless, but Isaac reads it less like “Whatever” and more like “I don’t have the energy to unpack that right now”. Totally fair.

Silence descends, broken only by the ticking of the grandfather clock by the door and the sounds of two teenagers who finally found their appetites.

“I never read the letter.”

What? 

“What?” Isaac questions through a mouthful of ziti. 

“The letter you gave me before you left. I never read it.”

He swallows. “Oh.” Scott had never mentioned it, which Isaac took to mean he’d either not opened it or simply not found anything of note in the chicken-scratch words. It’s not like it matters anymore. He’d been a little tempted to lay everything bare, all those words he’d never gotten the guts to say aloud, but that seemed like a heavy burden to dump on someone he was leaving, much less someone whose ex-girlfriend had just died. Besides, he was pretty sure the sentiment had bled between the lines of all his thank you’s in a way that was painfully unsubtle — despite how often Scott’s unabashed optimism gets mistaken for naivety, he’s not stupid, not in the slightest.

There’s an apologetic look on Scott’s face and he’s opening his mouth like he wants to say sorry so Isaac cuts in. “It wasn’t important anyways. Really.”

Scott must read the truth in the steady beat of his heart because he nods, his expression softening. “I guess it just felt too permanent. Like if I read it, that was really goodbye and you weren’t coming back.”

Stretching out one leg, Isaac nudges Scott’s shin with a socked foot. “I couldn’t stay away, not after you promised to save a few fights for me.”

Scott laughs, short and soft. “Did a good job with that, didn’t I?”

Isaac grins and Scott matches him, all dimples. “Yeah, man. You really fucking did.”

Scott’s amusement creeps farther up his face, etching lines at the corners of his eyes. He nudges Isaac’s ankle, so gentle he barely feels it. “Hey. If you help me clean up, we can Smash afterwards.”

“You’re on, McCall.”

As soon as the kitchen’s clean they’re racing up the stairs, feet slipping on smooth wood, hands gripping banisters to keep balanced. Scott beats him by a hair, laughing and breathless, and Isaac repays him by taking the better controller. They choose their old favorites, Captain Falcon and Zero Suit Samus; they laugh and argue and poke and prod; they call Stiles a three in the morning just to find that he, too, is still awake for no good reason.

For one night, just a few precious hours, they act like the teenagers they’re meant to be.

After graduation, Isaac moves back to the States with Camille in tow. They fly into Los Angeles and spend a few days working their way up the coast in the cheapest rental car they could acquire. Camille’s quieter than he’s ever heard her for the first two days, her eyes glued to the blue-grey waves below and the rolling green hills above, and even on the stretches where the highway curves away from the coast, hiding the Pacific behind pine trees and rugged terrain, the views are immaculate. Isaac would like to say he’s playing the role of unruffled, knowledgeable guide, but in truth these sights are new for him too and he’s loving every second of it.

They car camp on a beach. They stop to eat at seedy diners and little shacks that advertise fresh-caught fish. They sneak into a state park late one night and take a dip in cold, black water under the light of a half-moon. The first stretch of the PCH is the most jaw-dropping, hours upon hours of driving on a two-lane highway that hugs the coastline tighter than a wetsuit clings to a diver’s body, but all four days offer new sights, new people, and endless contentment.

The trip is underscored by a bittersweet tinge — by the middle of August, Isaac will be on a plane to Chicago and Camille will be headed back to France. It’s the logical next step considering Isaac never planned on making a life in France and Camille’s never called anywhere but Lyon home, but it’s still tough. He’ll miss her like a limb.

It’s just past nine PM on the fifth day when they finally pass the sign for Beacon Hills city limits, but despite the late hour Isaac takes a circuitous route just to pass his old house. The property was surrendered to him when he turned eighteen and he sold it with Argent’s help, although the new owners haven’t moved in yet and it’s still a silent, empty shell. The money from the house will pay his rent through college, the last and best thing his father ever did for him, and the fact that the new family is a lesbian couple with two kids is really the cherry on top. Suck it, Dad. Hopefully they make good use of the pool.

When they pull up in front of the McCall house, it couldn’t be more different from Isaac’s old place, all lived-in and cozy. There’s a row of gnomes standing guard by the steps, the shutters look freshly-painted, and the living room windows blaze with warm yellow light.

“We’re home,” Isaac says, cutting the engine.

Camille gives him a strange look but it’s gone so quickly, surrendering to a smile, that he wonders if he’s imagining things. “And I finally get to meet the True Alpha himself.”

“Yeah, just remember what I said about the formalities. He’s pretty strict on the whole Mr. Alpha thing, gets real offended if you just call him Scott.”

Shaking her head, Camille steps out without another word. She doesn’t slam the car door, but pointedly shuts it with just enough force to convey her exasperation. Isaac laughs quietly.

He’s expecting a warm welcome, of course, but he also expected to make it more than one step over the threshold before Melissa’s pulling him into the biggest hug of his life. “The prodigal son returns,” she teases, and he can feel the movement of her jaw against his sternum. 

“You saw me nine months ago,” Isaac complains, hugging her back all the same.

“Well, everybody was a little too preoccupied to catch up properly.” Her tone is kind but Isaac still winces at the memory of the breaking bond, his gaze sliding over her shoulder to Scott. “Oh, none of that,” she says, disentangling from his arms. “Speaking of catching up…you must be Camille.” 

Then Camille’s being taken ahold of and Scott moves into Isaac’s empty arms with ease. “Welcome back, man.”

He swears Scott gets bigger every time he sees him, but as far as he can tell Scott’s gotten no taller. Isaac’s never been a fan of the way he looms over people, but it feels so natural that for all the power in those broad shoulders, Scott still fits under his chin with relative ease. Camille’s knowing eyes are burning a hole into the back of Isaac’s head, but she’s already given him enough shit about Scott over the course of the roadtrip so he endures the look rather than turning to see the smug expression she’s wearing. He’ll get an earful about it later, he’s sure.

They spend a week in Beacon Hills. Camille meets the rest of the pack and hits it off with Malia immediately, which is only slightly terrifying. They go bowling, shoot some goals at the lacrosse field, explore the preserve, and compete in several heated Mario Kart tournaments. One morning Isaac wakes up in Scott’s bed with the Pirates of the Caribbean DVD menu still playing and Scott and Camille on either side of him, dead asleep, chip crumbs on the sheets and a flat soda sitting on the nightstand. Melissa rouses them with a heavy sigh and an order to wash the sheets before they leave for the day. Scott’s hair is sticking up on one side and Camille has red lines on her cheek and raccoon eyes from day-old eyeliner.

“You got a little…” Isaac gestures to his head and Scott frowns.

“So do you,” he says, his voice rough with sleep, and Isaac pats down his curls self-consciously.

“Your makeup’s kinda…”

Camille rolls her eyes. “Alright Tyra Banks, we just woke up.”

Scott finds that hilarious, but Isaac’s own grudging amusement fades when Scott locks his hands and stretches his arms above his head, pulling his shirt high enough to reveal a sliver of brown skin above his waistband. Isaac only stares for a second before tearing his attention away to lock eyes with Camille. He scowls, she raises her eyebrows, and Scott, unheeding of the silent argument occurring feet away, clambers off the bed and says, “I’m gonna start on breakfast. Can you guys get the sheets in the wash?”

“Yep!”

Camille’s chipper attitude disappears as soon as Scott’s on the stairs. She turns on Isaac with snakelike speed, something terribly devious alight in her eyes. “You are so obvious,” she says in French.

Isaac searches the ceiling like he’ll find some patience there. “You’re being obvious, making faces every time I so much as look at him.”

Pointing at her own chest with one red-polished nail, Camille’s jaw drops. “Me? Maybe if you stopped looking at him like you want to eat him—”

“Would you be quiet?”

“I am!” she hisses.

“For a human, maybe. His hearing’s better than ours.”

“He doesn’t speak French!”

“So?”

She slumps back against the headboard, arms crossed. “I hate you.”

Despite his exasperation, Isaac’s lips twitch. “No you don’t.”

“No, I don’t,” she agrees glumly, in English. “In your defense, if I knew how nice he is I would’ve given you less shit for being in love with him for two years.”

“Would you stop? I’m not letting you ruin our friendship with your meddling.”

Camille purses her lips like she’s keeping something snarky to herself. They eye each other, caught in a stalemate, but eventually all she says is, “Come on. Help me with the sheets.”

Scott and Isaac visit Allison’s grave on his second-to-last day. He feels bad about waiting so long, like he was putting it off, but it also feels fitting that it’s one of the last stops he’ll make in Beacon Hills. They sit on the damp grass in silence for a while, watching the dappled light that filters down through the trees and over the polished granite. Isaac’s not sure about an afterlife and he’s not one for talking to the dead, but he takes the time to let go — all that built-up love that’s had nowhere to go since she died, bleeding out of him and into the earth. All the affection he holds for everybody she saved, all the people who are still alive because of her…There’s a lot of love to be given to the dead, he finds. Their relationship would always be complicated, strained by knife and arrow wounds but strengthened by a shared commitment to protecting their friends. Before he leaves, he digs into his pocket for the silver arrowhead, placing it point-up among her blue and white flowers. 

He visits Boyd and Erica’s graves alone while Scott waits by his bike, giving him space. By coincidence, they’re in the same cemetery, but Boyd’s next to his sister and Erica’s in a plot on the far side surrounded by strangers. Isaac sits with Boyd for a while, trying to puzzle out why, of the three of them, only he’s still alive, but eventually it grows futile. He’s not sure if the twins chose Boyd to be the sacrifice because Isaac’s shifting allegiance was obvious even then, or if they thought he’d have more power to give, or if it was just the dumb luck of who was nearest. It’d be nice to be selfless, to be able to tell Boyd I wish it was me, but Isaac’s been kicking and screaming and clawing his way towards a better life for as long as he can remember and he’s not sure he wants to give it up. It’s massively unfair that he’s left sitting in a silent graveyard while the two kids who were turned alongside him are dead.

“Ready?” Scott asks, looking up from his bench as Isaac returns, but he doesn’t stand when Isaac stops a few feet in front of him, hands deep in his pockets, shoulders caved in. It takes a minute for the words to find him.

“I don’t always know how to do it.”

Scott scooches over, patting the bench beside him. “Do what?”

Isaac sits with a heavy exhale. His knee brushes Scott’s. “Make it up to them. Sometimes I feel like I have to live three lives just to— to replace what was taken from them.” He very pointedly doesn’t mention Derek because deep down he knows the blame isn’t entirely on him, but it’s the easiest place for his anger to go rather than hating a bunch of mass-murderers who are mostly dead anyways.

Leaning forward, elbows on his knees, Scott doesn’t speak for a long while. Finally: “I felt that way too, until my mom kind of hammered into my head that I was looking at it the wrong way. All we owe her — them — is to hold onto their memory and live our own lives as well as we can.”

“Yeah…” Isaac’s jaw tightens, keeping an argument stuck behind his teeth where it belongs. Scott’s probably right, but guilt’s a hard thing to let go of when the alternative is just an empty, useless ache. Looking up from his tightly-clapsed hands, he meets Scott’s eyes and asks, “Hey, when did you get so wise?”

Scott snorts, shaking his head. “I didn’t, I just spend too much time around my mom and Deaton. Some of that worldliness had to rub off eventually.”

Isaac gives him a skeptical expression. “Did it?”

Scott sighs. He stopped falling for the perpetual cynicism a long time ago, but it still seems to irritate him. “We’re all just doing our best. I mean, nursing! Dude, that’s awesome!”

“Yeah, well, I kind of want to see how I can help save people beyond all the…maiming and killing.” Isaac flexes his hand, tendons straining as he unleashes his claws for full effect. “Besides, I figured I’m a little too fucked in the head to be anybody’s therapist.” Scott’s eyes soften at the corners in a way that warns of an incoming heartfelt lecture, so Isaac quickly moves on. “Vet school will be great, though. You’ll do great.”

Now it’s Scott’s turn to look skeptical. “I hope.”

“Nah, you will.” His words are flippant but they bleed sincerity, and Scott looks touched. A flock of crows flies overhead in a chorus of jarring calls, making them glance up, and Isaac notes how low the sun has sunk, bleeding orange and red into a graying sky. “C’mon, let’s head back. Camille gets separation anxiety and I don’t want her to start chewing on the furniture.” Dog jokes might be the lowest of low-hanging fruit, but they’re funny every time.

Scott’s just about to kick his bike into gear when Isaac tightens his grip around Scott’s waist and says, “You can ask.”

Muscles tense under Isaac’s arms. “...Ask what?”

“Whatever question is obviously on the tip of your tongue?” Even with the rumble of the bike underneath them, Scott is stock-still. “Seriously. You smell anxious. It’s weirding me out.”

“Sorry. I’m just uh…wondering if you two are…” He trails off.

“Fucking?” Isaac supplies at the same time Scott finally lands on “Dating.”

Scott’s head turns so fast they almost knock helmets. “No,” Isaac says, “We’re not doing either of those things.”

“Oh.” Scott’s tone is hard to decipher, muffled behind his helmet. “Why not?”

“Uh. Because neither of us wants to? Why?”

“Just curious.” Scott’s unsteady heartbeat gives away the lie, and Isaac presses imperceptibly closer with a grin meant only for himself. Scott McCall, still surprising him after all these years.

Melissa got the night off so they could have dinner together before Isaac leaves, but she only makes it through one round of post-dinner board games before excusing herself on the grounds of a five-AM shift. Camille stays long enough for two rounds of uno, then also begs off on the grounds of her seven-AM flight, leaving Scott and Isaac alone on the couch.

“Nowhere to be?” Scott jokes, settling back against one arm so he’s sitting sideways.

“Nah.” Isaac turns his shoulders so he’s square with Scott, one leg stretching across the couch towards him. “I’ll take Camille to the airport, then get right back into bed until noon.”

“What time’s your flight?”

“Five.”

“Lucky you.” Scott’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but it seems more like tiredness than anguish bogging him down. He picks at the couch cushion, one long claw digging up a loose thread, and he keeps looking intently at his work as he asks, “Why Chicago?”

Isaac watches the thread unravel further. “Illinois is a good school for nursing and they offered plenty of scholarships…Not that money’s a big problem for Argent, but—” He gestures as if to say You understand. He’s tired of being the charity case, tired of feeling like he owes people, but between the scholarships and selling the old house, he’s pretty much paying his own way. “Besides,” he adds, “UI practically funnels nursing students straight into Chicago hospitals, which means a job if I decide to live there long-term.”

“Would you?” Scott’s eyes flick up to meet his, something in his voice making Isaac wonder, for just a second, if he’d ask him to stay. But no, Scott’s too selfless to ask such a thing and Isaac’s too selfish to give it all up for Beacon Hills. What’s here besides fresh graves and old wounds? 

Three cushions away, Scott’s still looking at him like…like Isaac fucking matters. And that’s the thing about Scott: from anybody else, Isaac might interpret the lingering looks and casual touches and lovingly bestowed words as signs that maybe his feelings are reciprocated, but Scott is really, truly just like that. That tiny hint of jealousy when they’d been talking on the bike was the first time Isaac’s ever had reason to suspect that he’s not alone in this. If Isaac closed the gap between them, planted one knee between Scott’s legs, cupped his jaw and tilted his chin and slotted their lips together like he’s been wanting for years, would Scott kiss him back? Would he draw Isaac in by the back of the neck and thread his fingers in his hair and part his lips for more? If it’s rejection he’d receive instead, Isaac’s sure it’d be a terribly, painfully kind one.

Either way, they’ll go to bed tonight and wake up with the sun tomorrow. Within a few hours, Isaac will be on his way to Chicago and whether or not Scott kisses him back won’t change anything.

“Maybe,” Isaac answers truthfully. “Maybe not.”

Some sound only audible to alpha ears makes Scott’s head whip towards the window. Isaac’s instantly on high alert, but Scott relaxes after a second so Isaac follows his cue. In profile, Scott looks older, more commanding; strongly curved nose, sharp jawline, furrowed brow. Is that who their enemies see, the supernatural phenom? Or do they realize that all that effort, all that violence, was going into corrupting and killing a literal teenage boy?

In the end, Isaac doesn’t kiss him. They talk about nothing until the clock strikes midnight, then they go to their respective rooms with twin “see you tomorrows” where Isaac flops face-up on his bed with his jeans still on and tries very, very hard to stop thinking about Scott McCall.

—

Isaac lasts four months in Chicago before he runs into trouble. He’s on his way home from an evening class when the cutting Lake Michigan wind switches directions, carrying with it a distinct scent: werewolves. They’d been staying downwind, too, which means they could’ve been following him for blocks without notice.

He hears a near-silent footfall right behind himself and spins, claws out, eyes shining bright. The street’s a residential one-way and more or less void of people this time of night, but all it takes is one curious onlooker before Chicago PD receives reports of wolfmen fighting in the streets — mindful of this, yet fully aware he might be screwing himself, he dodges another grasping hand and ducks into an alley. It’s not a dead-end, thank God, and it spits him out onto a small street. Isaac has always carried most of his strength in his lower body. He’ll never have the raw power of Scott or Boyd, but he has long legs and strong lungs and he can hear the pack losing steam behind him. Once in a while one of them will cut him off from a side street and send him veering in a different direction, but they’re fading fast despite their numbers.

Isaac’s finally convinced he lost them, just starting to recognize he’s somewhat lost himself, when a deep shadow detaches itself from an overpass and drops twenty feet down to the road. Pavement cracks underfoot and Isaac skids to a stop, panting, as two red eyes blink at him. The figure straightens up to its full, impressive height, still obscured in the gauzy darkness of an abandoned industrial street.

Where the hell am I? 

Then an even more sickening thought occurs.

I never lost them. I was herded here.

Rage surges up, breaking and rearranging bone as his features morph into a full shift — caveman brow, sideburns, the whole nine yards. His senses are stronger like this, nasal passages widened to accommodate more scent receptors, ears perfectly shaped to capture the flutter of a pigeon’s wings three blocks away. He sees the alpha’s jaws yawn wide, sees the flash of teeth almost twice the length of his, and spares only a brief moment of thought for the schoolbag still on his back before he’s rushing them.

Maybe losing two of his friends to a pack of alphas should’ve given him a better sense of when not to engage. Maybe facing down an alpha almost as tall as Ennis should’ve given him pause. Maybe the fact that he’s more than two-thousand miles away from his pack should’ve been reason enough to lie down and accept his fate. All these maybes flit through Isaac’s mind as a booted foot catches him in the chest with enough force to stop a moving semi-truck, sending him flying. His backpack cushions the worst of the fall, and he spares a moment of gratitude that his laptop’s not in there as pencils and book spines crack under the force of impact.

Like a bull enraged beyond reason by the matador’s cloak, Isaac snarls and tries to rise.

“I wouldn’t,” the alpha says, their voice cutting through the sound of traffic overhead. “Not unless you want a shattered spine to go with those broken ribs.”

Unheeding, Isaac tries to push himself up and succeeds only in face planting onto cold asphalt. “What do you want?” The defiant tone he’s going for is undercut by the nauseating gurgle of blood in his throat.

Laughter echoes. “First, I’d like to get out of the street. Grab him.”

Nothing actually hurts that bad, but it’s the absence of pain combined with the boneless feel of his legs that make him wonder if his spine really is broken. L4 or L5, he thinks, somewhat hysterically recalling an anatomy lesson from last week. His hands work fine, he notes, his fingers twitching on command as a pair of burly, blue-eyed betas pull his arms over their shoulders and haul him up. Woozy and a little terrified, he still can’t help himself. “You fellas come here often?”

“God, not another back-talker,” one of them groans. The other just grunts in response. 

Thing 1 and Thing 2, as he magnanimously decides to name them, drag him into an empty warehouse and down a perilous flight of steps with their alpha trailing behind. The whole basement aspect has Isaac unnerved, and the gravity of the situation is starting to override the panic of his limp legs. He’s dropped unceremoniously, like a sack of potatoes, and groans as his ribs make contact with the hard ground. An army of phantom ants marches up his spinal column — the sensation of bone healing is always worse than muscle. Still not mobile by any means, he digs deep and finds the wherewithal to hoist himself onto on his elbows. His backpack puts in work propping him up.

“Why am I here?”

The alpha steps out of the murky darkness, her eyes still alight. Her outfit’s somewhere at the intersection of grunge and punk, she stands at least as tall as Isaac, and she’s got a pirate  chest’s-worth of gold jewelry twisted into her long dreads. She’d be pretty if she weren’t so terrifyingly, calculatingly cold. “You’re here to pay a blood debt.”

Well that’s terrifyingly ominous. Isaac looks her up and down. “If it’s the Kurt Cobain thing you’re hung up on, I get it, but killing me won’t bring him back.”

Her eyes narrow imperceptibly, that faint twitch all the reaction he gets before she plows forward. “For years, my pack has held a very fragile peace with hunters…Until two days ago, when one of them was killed in his own home.”

Shit. “You think I did it.”

“You’re the first lone wolf to enter our pack’s territory in almost four years. Maybe you didn’t know our rules,” she suggests.

Isaac’s eyes fall shut, his chin dropping to his chest. Everything he survived in Beacon Hills, and now werewolf mafia politics are going to be the end of him. When he looks up again, his eyes are gold. “Do I look like a killer?”

The alpha cocks her head, smiling. “You misunderstand. I’m not concerned with your innocence, Omega, just your presence here.” She slides her eyes upward and Isaac cranes his neck, following her gaze to the industrial-sized steel hooks dangling from the low ceiling.

He’s not on trial, he’s a scapegoat. 

His toes curl in his sneakers, the first real movement he’s managed so far. He’s healing too slowly — by the time he gets his legs under him, he’ll be strung up like a slab of meat. Or just dead.

That’s when he hears the sinuous slide of metal over stone. No, no, no nononono. He twists around to see Thing 1 marching towards him, several feet of steel chain dragging behind with a death rattle. 

Do you know what the difference between a seven and a nine is? It’s a stripped bolt! 

He struggles, but it’s futile. The click of a reinforced manacle closing around his wrist echoes in the empty basement, so like the sound of a padlock snapping shut. Lurching forward, Isaac gets one half-numb leg under himself and heaves upward before a meaty hand pulls him back to the ground. As the second manacle closes around his wrist he gives in to instinct, throws his head back, and roars. It’s deafening, unending, a primal sound that shakes dust from the ceiling, rattles rusty pipes, and sends rats skittering back to their dens in fear. Thing 1 and Thing 2 retreat, releasing their hold, while the alpha takes one halting step forward as though she means to stop him. Strangely enough, once his air runs out and he tapers off into breathlessness, he feels clearer-headed. Isaac might be bogged down by years of fear, but the animal lurking in his hindbrain wants only survival.

Think, Isaac, think. He claws bloody crescents into the meat of his palm and wills his injured, useless body to action. Think. Fighting is obviously a lost cause: the alpha hits like a tank and Thing 1 and Thing 2 are still hulking behind him, unnerved but perfectly capable of subduing him. Something almost contemplative has taken over the alpha’s face as she demands, “Grab him. He’ll hang until death if the hunters don’t find him first.”

In a sudden burst of clarity, Isaac remembers that night in the locker room sophomore year. He’d been maybe fifteen seconds away from bisection until Scott had appeared…in the nick of time, as always. He’s alone in the city, but he still has his pack. He still has people who care.

Isaac starts laughing, raspy and rough and painful on the ribs, but the befuddled outrage on the alpha’s face is more than worth it. He laughs and laughs and he finds he can’t stop laughing. They probably think he’s certifiable.

As well as he can with his leg all cockeyed beneath him, Isaac falls back onto the ground. He gestures, chains rattling, at the alpha, the hooks in the ceiling, the henchmen. He huffs out another laugh, coughs, and spits out something that looks suspiciously like blood — not as healed as he’d hoped, then. “You guys are so screwed.”

Footsteps tell him the Things are moving in, but they halt on silent command from the alpha. She’s in his peripheral now, and he has to let his head loll sideways to see her properly. She’s finally put the alpha eyes away, he realizes; her human eyes are dark and wide and disarming when they meet his. “Let him have his last words.”

She’s disguising it as mercy, but Isaac can tell by her focus that he has her ear. For the first time, he notices just how young she looks. “You think you have problems with the hunters?” he taunts. “If you kill me and string me up for dead, you’re going to have much bigger issues.”

She doesn’t move, doesn’t even blink, and Isaac fights down a wave of unease at the eerie, unnatural stillness of her. Kali didn’t even freak him out as bad as this post-punk, kangaroo-kicking, back-alley alpha who currently has him locked in an impasse. She’s waiting for him to elaborate, he’s waiting for her to ask, but the more she stares the more Isaac feels his resolve weaken. Finally: “You know the Argents, yeah?”

“This is your plan, hiding behind hunters? I know the Argents, yes. I know three centuries of hunting blueboods were nearly wiped out in the span of a year.” The alpha reaches up, tossing a stray bit of hair over her shoulder in a move so impatiently human that Isaac gets mental whiplash. “I know one of them died protecting werewolves and that the last of them is an old man whose heart’s gone soft.”

From his position on the floor, Isaac does his best approximation of a shrug. “Well, that old man is still very well armed and firmly allied with a true alpha.”

If he didn’t have her attention before, he does now. She closes the distance in two long strides, crouching right in front of him and grabbing him by the chin. “There are no true alphas. I gave you a chance for some oh-so-noble last words and you try to lie to me?” The alpha’s eyes are still brown, not red, but the claws digging in above Isaac’s jugular are proof enough of her anger.

It’s probably not a smart time to antagonize her, but Isaac risks his own skin just to quip, “You read the Argent’s entire Wikipedia page and you didn’t know about that?” He feels a drop of blood roll down his neck and very quickly reorganizes his priorities. “Listen to my heart,” he says, enunciating every syllable. “There’s a true alpha in California by the name of Scott McCall. If I die, I don’t expect he’ll be interested in the semantics of who strung me up versus who pulled the trigger.” 

“He’s telling the truth, Myna.”

The alpha — Myna — holds Isaac’s eyes for another second before she releases him with a shove. “So he is,” she says to whichever Thing had spoken.

“He’s healing, too. He’ll be sound enough to bolt in a few minutes”

“He’s right,” Isaac cuts in. “Really, it’s in your best interest to let me—”

“Quiet,” she admonishes, prodding his foot with her own. “I’m thinking.” Isaac thinks of the damage those boots inflicted once already and goes silent. Somewhere in the building overhead, an overfilled gutter’s dripping a steady, maddening beat. The floor’s freezing, the stale air smells like garbage and black mold, and Isaac very badly wants to be done with this whole experience.

On the plus side, he’s finally able to sit up. With the help of his hands, he drags his pins-and-needles right leg into a more comfortable position, situating himself so he can keep all three wolves in his peripheral vision.

“Myna…” Thing 2 warns.

“Look, I’ll help you find the killer, settle this debt, whatever. But you can’t kill me without screwing yourself, so sooner or later I’m getting out of these.” Isaac rattles his chains for emphasis, then winces at the sound. He’s trying not to sound desperate, but the manacles are chafing his nerves more than his wrists and he feels like he’s on the brink of a full-blown banshee-style meltdown, screaming and all.

“For someone so confident, you’re terrified,” Myna observes. She can probably smell the desperation on him. “You’re also right.”

“You can break my back again if you like,” he offers, “but that’s a temporary fix.”

The flat stare she levels at him makes Isaac wonder if she will, but after a few agonizing seconds she looks away. “You have a week. If I don’t have someone to turn over by then, Scott McCall won’t save you.”

Five minutes later he’s hobbling up the same stairs he was dragged down half an hour ago, weak-kneed and exhausted. He calls Lydia as soon as he’s a few blocks away.

“I’ve got a situation, and I need your help.”

“At eleven o’clock at night?”

He realizes too late that eleven for him is midnight in Massachusetts. “Yeah. Unless you’re sleeping.”

There’s a long pause. “Not anymore. What’s wrong?”

He explains the situation (leaving out the gory details) and receives a heavy sigh that’s easily audible through the phone. “Why don’t you call Stiles? You know, the guy training to be FBI?” 

“Because Stiles will tell Scott.”

Another sigh. “And why, pray tell, do you want to keep this from Scott?”

“Because he’s finally gotten out of Beacon Hills after spending his formative years saving everyone’s asses. You know him, he’ll be on the first plane out of Davis.”

There’s a long, curious pause on Lydia’s end. “Right,” she finally says. “Well, you’ll need to figure out what happened, but keep in mind there’s three possibilities here. One; the hunter’s murderer was just a run-of-the-mill killer, which is—”

“Unlikely.”

“Please don’t interrupt me. But yes, unlikely. Two; it was a werewolf, which could mean a local with an agenda or a stranger who didn’t know about the truce. Three; it was the hunters.”

“You think they killed one of their own?”

“If they wanted an excuse for all-out war, they might have. You know the Argents, they’ve done worse for less.”

“Some of them,” Isaac says, thinking of Allison. Only the death of her mother had turned her sour enough to follow Gerard, and even then she couldn’t be swayed into crossing that point of no return.

“Some, not all.” Lydia’s voice sounds heavy even through the phone.

He feels bad for bringing it up, and tries to repair his mistake by asking, “How’s MIT?”

“I’m busier than I thought I’d be,” she replies cryptically. “You’re okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, mostly.”

“Good.” There’s a beat where he only hears her breathing, then, “I gotta go. I’ll call if I think of anything else.”

“Of course. Thanks, Lydia.”

“Mhm. Goodnight.”

Then the line goes dead. Isaac limps back into his dorm as quietly as he can but Caleb’s awake, phone screen illuminating his face in the dark room. “You’re home late,” he observes, making Isaac feel like a cheating spouse caught slinking home with his tail between his legs.

“Yep. It’s not what you think.”

“Sure, man. You at least use a condom?”

Isaac chucks the sweaty, dirty sock he just peeled off, narrowly missing him. “Funny guy.” He’s sure if the lights were on, his battered state would be a little more obvious, so he quickly changes in the dark and drops face-first into bed. Professional sleuthing can wait until the morning.

Turns out a hunter was to blame.

The matriarch of the family, one Loretta Jefferson, was surprisingly obliging when he dropped Myna’s name, and he thinks he detected a whiff of respect for the alpha despite the years of bad blood between wolves and hunters. She ordered the body exhumed and Isaac met her at a funeral home with no small amount of trepidation. The mortician had done an admirable job reconstructing the hunter’s slashed throat, but upon examination his wounds were still easy to identify. Lydia had sent him a list of questions and considerations, and Isaac mentally digs through them for a good starting point.

“Where was his body found?”

“In bed,” Jefferson tells him, a frown deepening the existing furrows in her face. “His throat was slashed while he slept.”

Isaac thinks of Argent and his plethora of security systems: electrified window sills, motion sensors, heat sensors. “How likely is it that someone could get in undetected?”

“If they were unfamiliar with the home’s security? Not probable, but not impossible.”

He recalls heading number three on Lydia’s meticulous write-up. Recreate the scene. Moving around the body, he positions himself beside it with his claws at the dead man' s throat. “Like this?”

Jefferson shakes her head. “On the other side. There was substantial blood spatter and a footprint that tells us the killer stood by the head and slashed towards itself.”

Pointedly ignoring her use of it, Isaac moves accordingly. 

3e) Check the wounds. See if they’re consistent with what you could do to a man. 

Disturbing advice, but effective. Isaac leans in, studying the three deep gashes with a close eye. This is comically out of his realm of expertise…Wait. Three? No, there’s the fourth, but the gash under the chin was either repaired exceptionally well by the mortician or it wasn’t very deep to begin with. “Was this the shallowest cut?”

Jefferson pulls up a photo on her phone. “See for yourself. We took some photos before the police arrived.”

That’s an odd thing to do but Isaac’s glad of it, because when he brightens the photo and zooms in, it’s pretty obvious that the two outer cuts were the weakest. One might not even have been deep enough to kill, upon close inspection.

“Look,” he says, holding up his own clawed hand with his thumb tucked in. “If I were to slash a sleeping man’s throat, I’d either grab with all five fingers and pull up, or use four fingers and slash sideways.”

Jefferson seems unperturbed by his brutal assessment. “The latter,” she says simply.

“Sure,” Isaac agrees, “based on the damage. But whether I used my right or left hand, one of those outside cuts would’ve been the index finger.” He wiggles his fingers for emphasis, still holding the digits in the air. “Second-longest finger, second-biggest claw.”

Catching his train of thought, Jefferson fixes her attention on the aforementioned finger. “That should be one of the deepest cuts.”

“Should be.” He’s starting to like her, against his best judgement. “If anything, the least amount of damage would come from the pinky.”

Jefferson tilts her chin up. She’s probably a good foot shorter than him, but the difference seems insignificant with the way she carries herself. “You seem awfully knowledgeable,” she observes, her tone edging towards accusation.

Isaac’s eyes flash gold, and though he doesn’t want to be cowed by this woman he can’t help but quickly stuff the claws away. “I’ve never killed.”

She just laughs, shaking her head. “Relax, boy. I know what color your eyes are, and I promised Myna you’d walk out in one piece today.” Today. Isaac doesn’t miss the thinly veiled threat.

“Oh. Thanks.” He clears his throat and nods down at the body, redirecting the conversation away from his possible demise. “Well, I don’t know who or what killed him, but unless you know of anybody with a noticeably stumpy pointer finger, I’m not sure it was a wolf. The middle cuts being so much worse than the other two…it’s weird.”

“I’m going to need more than weird before I let Myna off the hook,” Jefferson warns, “though there is one other thing.” She digs in one of her pockets and comes up with a plastic baggie, the little kind that looks like it usually holds cocaine. “We pulled this from his neck.”

At first glance it looks like a fragment of a werewolf’s claw, but when Isaac pulls it out and gives it a reluctant sniff, he’s hit with a decidedly artificial smell. “Plastic,” he says. At Jefferson’s dubious expression, he shrugs. “Our claws come in and out of our skin regularly, you’d be surprised by how strongly a scent can linger on them.” Talia Hale’s claws had been sealed in a wooden box and buried in mountain ash for eight years, and they’d still carried a faint whiff of werewolf under the acrid stench of smoke and burnt flesh. Unpleasant, to say the least.

“What you suggest may be treason.” Jefferson’s expression has gone sour. “If you’re telling the truth, whoever killed this man tried very hard to make it look like a werewolf.”

Isaac drops the fragment back into the bag and holds it out. “I know how it looks, but I wouldn’t be here if I thought Myna’s pack was guilty. It’d be a lot easier to hand over any random wolf and let the debt be paid.”

“Random…like you?”

He hadn’t told Jefferson about Myna’s plan to scapegoat him, but she’s more than smart enough to put two and two together. “Yeah, like me,” he admits. “I’m saving my own ass here, but I’m still telling the truth.” There’s no way to convince her of that fact, but Jefferson’s been nothing but reasonable so far. “You seem like you want to believe me.”

Jefferson tucks the bag away and briefly checks her phone before returning her attention to him. “I do. Myna has held her end of the bargain for six years and I’m loath to believe she’d allow her own wolves to break it now. What happened demands retribution — such is the way of our world — but I doubt she had a hand in this.”

“Your bargain?”

“We maintain a ceasefire under the condition that she doesn’t recruit betas, not by bite or assimilation. That goes for you too, boy, no matter what favors she has you running around this city doing for her.”

“I’m not looking for a pack.”

Jefferson frowns. “It’s a dangerous world for an omega. Not every hunter in the city follows our family’s creed.”

Isaac smiles, sly and self-assured. “Ah, don’t worry about me. I’m spoken for.”

Jefferson gets in touch with Myna three days later with intel: two of her hunters had concocted a plan to murder their unsuspecting brother, sparking a killing spree against Myna’s pack. Myna texts him a picture of two headless human corpses which Isaac, unsuspecting, opens in the middle of class. He turns his phone off and flips it face-down and waits until he’s alone in his dorm to reply, I don’t know how you got my number. Please never text me again. 

He doesn’t make it back to California until winter break of his junior year. If asked, he’d have said that he’s been so busy with keeping his scholarships, internships, and friendships intact that going back was just impossible, but he’s self-aware enough to know that he’s avoiding it a little. Melissa calls him on birthdays, Christmases, and other sporadic occasions and he stays in touch with the pack via phone, but aside from one mysterious text he’d received from Scott in September of his freshman year — Do you know a Stiles? — he doesn’t hear about the Ghost Rider or Anuk-ite debacles until he’s a ripe twenty-one years old and Scott guiltily confesses that he’s still got two and a half years of undergrad left.

“...You mean one and a half?”

“Uhh…”

So apparently the entire pack had deferred their first semesters at college but because of some scholarship mumbo-jumbo, Scott had deferred his entire first year, which is explained to Isaac over the phone along with a rambling story of Nazi lion-wolves, undead cowboys, and fear-crazed hunters.

“What the fuck?” 

“If we told you, you would’ve come back!” Scott says, like that’s a perfectly rational explanation for keeping Isaac in the dark for two years.

His voice rises. “None of you could be bothered to tell me about Gerard or the— the fucking cowboys?” 

Caleb, a lifelong Philadelphia Eagles fan, pokes his head around the doorframe at the word cowboy like an activated sleeper agent. “What’s going on?”

Isaac waves him away.

“Is that Caleb? Tell him I say hi.”

“Scott says hi,” Isaac relays, deadpan, and that’s all his friend needs to hear before he’s heading for the kitchen. “Scott, seriously. What the fuck?”

“You were the only one of us getting your life on track and it’s because you weren’t here. I’m not going to pull you back into a fight for your life when you’ve made it very clear you don’t want to be here.”

Being left out of the loop stings; Scott’s words are a knife to the gut. Largely because he’s right, but to hear it phrased so baldly, like what Isaac knew deep-down was obvious to everyone else, is uniquely painful. “You know…” he pauses, the words tangling up his throat. When they do come out, they’re soft and uncertain. “You know it’s not about you, right? It’s not about any of you.”

“I know,” Scott says simply. He means it too, and Isaac can almost picture the consoling expression he’s wearing. “You gotta do what you gotta do. Even with the Anuk-ite gone, Beacon Hills is still crawling with hunters. Most of us stay away as much as we can.”

Isaac drops his phone onto his chest and stares up at the ugly off-white of his bedroom ceiling, making up his mind. Scott’s voice comes through all muffled against his shirt. “Isaac?”

“I’m here,” he says, picking his phone back up, “And I’m coming to visit.”

“I’m not trying to guilt-trip you—”

“I know, but my winter break starts in three weeks. If Beacon Hills is that bad, I’ll come to you in Davis.”

There’s just enough silence on Scott’s end that Isaac starts second-guessing himself. It’s been more than two years, for God’s sake, and Scott might not be the grudge-holding type but Isaac willingly went AWOL on them—

“Send me the date. I’ll pick you up from the airport.”

Oh, Isaac doesn’t deserve him. “Still got that bike of yours?”

“Of course.”

“I bet you’re a real hotshot around campus with that thing.”

Embarrassment colors Scott’s voice when he says, “Shut up. I’ll see you soon.”

Scott looks the same yet entirely different. He has a few more tattoos on his left arm and a slim silver hoop through one nostril, but his hair’s cut and styled the way it always used to be and he’s wearing an old t-shirt and pants that Isaac recognizes from their high school days. He’s leaning against his bike in the airport pickup line when Isaac walks out, his posture casual and loose in a way that’s entirely unfamiliar. Scott looks older than he used to, which should be a “no shit” moment, except he hasn’t aged, really, just gotten more…adult. More settled in his own skin.

It’s a very attractive trait.

“You come back with a midwest accent?” Scott says by way of greeting, grinning as he pushes off the bike.

Isaac drops his bag so he has two free arms to embrace Scott. “Nah, just a newfound sense of politeness.”

“That’ll be the day.”

When they separate, Scott looks him up and down with an almost disbelieving look. They’re close enough that he has to tilt his head to meet Isaac’s eyes, the movement accompanied by a brief surge of…something? Isaac’s never been very good at the whole werewolf sense of smell: he can track someone’s scent well enough, but distinguishing between emotions and cataloguing chemosignals isn’t exactly his strong suit. It’s like his nose refuses to connect with his brain quite the way it should. Anger and pain are strong, but hard to differentiate. Anxiety’s similar, carrying the same sweat-scent, though it often blurs indistinctly into other feelings. He can only separate excitement from contentment by the beat of someone’s heart, the speed of their breath.

So Isaac has no idea what that sudden emotion from Scott is and it’s smothered before he can try and pick it out. All Scott says is, “You look different.”

“I look different?” His hair’s a little longer than it used to be, but nothing about his fashion sense or personal style has changed much since he was seventeen. “How did you even get a piercing without it healing over?”

Scott smiles sheepishly. “Deaton helped. He sat the ring over some wolfsbane and smoked it like a Christmas ham for a couple hours. It doesn’t hurt, but it keeps my skin from healing around the metal.”

“That man is an endless font of knowledge.”

“No kidding.” Scott jerks his head in the direction of the bike. “We should go, I’ve been here for half an hour and they’ve been trying to kick me out of line for most of that time. You hungry?”

He wasn’t a second ago, but as soon as the words pass Scott’s lips, Isaac’s suddenly aware of a gnawing feeling in his gut. “Starving. Where’re we going?”

“Hm.” Scott bends down to pick up his bag, passing it over with a sparkle in his eyes. “I know a good Mexican place nearby.”

Slinging the straps of the duffel around his shoulders like a backpack, Isaac lets Scott settle in on the bike before swinging his leg over the seat. He takes the proffered helmet with a smile, tugging it on and flipping up the visor long enough to say, “We better actually be going to a restaurant, Scott, or so help me. I’m done following you into meetings with crazed alphas.”

“No more of that,” Scott laughs, kicking the bike into gear. “I promise.”

The restaurant is better than good. Isaac gets up to use the bathroom and instead finds their waitress and pays the tab, because he knows Scott will try if he doesn’t. “You’re housing me for the next few days,” he says in response to Scott’s devastating look of betrayal, “It’s the least I can do.”

“I’m not housing you, you’re not a stray.”

“Man, I’ve been a stray since I showed up on your doorstep soaking wet four years ago.”

He means it as a joke, but Scott goes quiet until they’re back outside where he says, slowly, “You know that wasn’t like…charity or anything.”

Scott doesn’t see it that way but Isaac will still spend the rest of his life trying to pay it back. It’s not just the roof over his head either: it’s the fact that Scott’s house was the only place he’s ever thought of as home. Not a place to stay, not four walls and a roof, but a sense of belonging.

There’s no way to articulate that without sounding sappy though, so all he says is, “I know.”

Stuffed full of rice and beans and deliciously-seasoned chicken, they go back to Scott’s place with no real plan. It’s almost six o’clock, which means it’s almost eight in Isaac’s brain, and between the jet lag and the perpetual tiredness of college students, there’s no thought in anyone’s head of doing something productive. They wave hello and goodbye to Scott’s roommate — on his way out right as they come in — and collapse on the couch in Scott’s tiny, sparsely-furnished living room. It’s smaller than the one in the McCall house, but they still take their respective places on each end with their legs stretched towards the middle and end up bumping knees.

“Did you get taller?” Scott grouses, wedging his foot between the back of the couch and Isaac’s hip.

“Not likely.”

“Well, you’re leggier.”

“Also not likely,” Isaac returns with a grin. “Don’t blame me for actually hitting the six-foot mark.”

Scott’s “Aw, c’mon” doesn’t sound very put-out. He’s smiling too. “The latino genetics weren’t gonna work in my favor.”

It’s hard to place which of Scott’s features he got from which parent, but the overall effect is definitely favorable. His temperament, his gentleness — that’s all Melissa, and that’s more than favorable too. “Don’t take it too hard,” Isaac teases, “height’s just about all I got from my dad. That and the quick temper.”

Scott takes his humor for what it is and doesn’t comment on the ‘quick temper’ part. “You could’ve done worse,” is all he says; then, “Enough about parents. How’s Chicago?”

Isaac outlines the past three years with what he hopes is an acceptable amount of detail. He very intentionally skips past his freshman-year encounter with Myna and the Jefferson family, looping around to tack it on behind a story about a classmate like an afterthought, but the mention of a basement kidnapping makes Scott lift his head from where he’d been slumped backwards against the arm of the sofa.

“You gave me so much shit for not keeping you up on Beacon Hills’ drama, meanwhile you Poirot’d your way out of a werewolf feud?” At Isaac’s blank look, he adds, “Agatha Christie?

“Oh. Yeah.” While he hates to take too much credit, Isaac leaves Lydia out of the story for Scott’s sake, just as he’d left Scott out of the issue for Scott’s sake. “I didn’t even know you were dealing with the hunters around that time, but I knew you’d come if I called. You always have.”

“Because we’re pack,” Scott stresses.

“Right. And you didn’t call me about the hunters and the ghost riders because…”

Scott goes boneless again, molding to the side of the couch so he doesn’t have to meet Isaac’s eyes. “Because I knew you’d come if I called.”

There it is. The self-sacrificing stalemate.

Silence thickens between them, crystallizing into something nearly tangible. How do you navigate things like that? I love you so much I’ll push you away. I love you so much I’ll let you live your life without me in it. When did the desire to keep each other safe become avoidance?

Isaac’s sure he’s not the only one. Everyone’s been scattered to the four winds these past years like coming together will bring their bad luck down on the others. They’ll come back around — there’s too much affection and trauma-bonding to keep the pack apart forever — but they’re all in a weird stage of life. It’s hard to figure out how to move on without leaving everything behind. 

Amid the deafening silence, Isaac knocks his knee against Scott’s. “So? What’s up with you, then?”

It’s a weak attempt to break the melancholy moment, but Scott takes the bait. “School. Work. More school. More work. Rinse and repeat.”

“No social life?”

“Eh,” Scott says, wiggling one hand from side to side. “Sort of, but most of my friends are in my classes.”

“Hm.” Isaac tries for casual when he asks, “Girlfriend?”

Scott’s eyes narrow. “I have friends who are girls, but no. No girlfriend.” He pauses, studying Isaac intently across the couch before he says, “No boyfriend, either.” It’s either an admission or a test, Isaac’s not sure which. “What about you?”

Isaac can feel the warmth of Scott’s leg pressed up against his side. “Nah.”

His flippant answer makes Scott lean forward with a frown. “No?”

“Why do you sound surprised?”

Scott shrugs, wrapping his arms around his one bent knee to keep himself upright. “I sort of thought you and Caleb…”

There was a time when Isaac lived in fear of someone making those kinds of assumptions. Now, he shakes his head and pokes at Scott’s ribs with one foot. “You also thought me and Camille…” He trails off just like Scott did, raising his eyebrows. “You’re a werewolf. Can you really not tell when someone’s into someone else?”

“Can you?” Scott challenges, a certain slyness creeping into his expression. 

Caught out, Isaac grows sulky. “No. Only when it’s obvious.” 

“How obvious?”

Isaac sits forward and Scott dislodges his leg, tucking the limb into the fold of his arms. He very suddenly regrets bringing the topic up, especially with the way Scott’s eyes refuse to leave his. “I dunno. Like, Stiles and Lydia obvious.”

His heart’s doing its best approximation of a rabbit, and the longer Scott sits there with his knowing Mona Lisa smile, just out of reach, the twitchier Isaac feels. Obvious, obvious, obvious. It’s spelled out in his racing heartbeat, his eyes, his blood; written into his very being in a way that makes him doubt he was ever as subtle as he’d hoped.

“So if I asked to kiss you, right now…would that be obvious enough?”

Isaac’s eyes widen, words catching in his throat. This marks the second time that Scott McCall has struck him completely, utterly dumb.

No, I mean you. I don’t want you to get hurt. 

“You could say no,” Scott continues, his tone so soft it’s almost condescending, “and I’ll never bring it up again.”

He’s telling the truth. Isaac could refuse him right and here and now, and that answer would hold until the end of their days because Scott takes people at their word.

“Yes.” It comes out strangled but before he gets a chance to try again, something sparks in Scott’s eyes. He uncoils his limbs and moves forward into Isaac’s space and a split second is all the preparation he gets before Scott’s kissing him, slow and deep. He’s a good kisser. His lips are soft and his hands are warm on Isaac’s face, and surrounded by the scent and the taste of him, Isaac sort of wants to crawl into his skin and stay there forever. Which is a really normal thought to have.

Either Scott runs hot or Isaac’s just burning up from the inside out. It’s impossible to tell whose body heat is whose, pressed together from head to hips. When Scott’s weight presses down, Isaac goes willingly, a hand cradling the crown of his head before it can connect with the couch. There are too many options, too many places he wants to touch, so Isaac grips Scott’s hip and tugs him closer just to narrow the playing field. It should feel claustrophobic, closed-in, but the fearful part of Isaac’s brain is utterly shut down by the inherent safety of Scott. He doesn’t even care that he’s halfway to hard just from a kiss, that Scott can almost certainly feel it against his thigh, because when his teeth find Scott’s lower lip he’s rewarded with a stuttering gasp that makes his head spin.

What started out as a decidedly less-than-chaste kiss quickly devolves into something downright dirty. They should probably be taking this slower, but any ideas of restraint fly right out the window when Isaac shifts his thigh so it slots neatly between Scott’s and feels him rut against the newfound friction. Even between two layers of jeans it’s heady, intoxicating. Isaac doesn’t need to see Scott naked to know the power that lies under his skin because he can feel it, all that muscle and sinew so perfectly honed for violence yet completely contained. It’s a form of restraint that Isaac’s practiced but never perfected. Here, with Scott, he finds it’s easier to gentle the crushing power in his hands and dull the honed edges of his claws.

“We should move,” Scott says, finally drawing back far enough to meet Isaac’s eyes. His lips shine with saliva, and Isaac tracks the movement of them when he adds, hesitantly, “...Or stop?”

“Do you want to stop?”

“No.”

The answering flash of teeth is more lupine than human. “Me neither.”

Later, in the sweaty, sticky aftermath, Scott rolls over and braces himself on his elbows so he can look down at him. “This wasn’t…”

Isaac freezes, waiting for the words he couldn’t bear to hear. This wasn’t serious. 

Of course, that’s not where Scott’s going. “This wasn’t just sex, or a one-time thing. Not for me.” He’s frowning slightly — not upset, just waiting on Isaac’s response. Maybe bracing for a rejection, too. 

“I know.” Isaac starts to reach for Scott’s face, an aborted movement that falls short. “I have a degree to finish, and so do you, but…”

Some of the lines ease out of Scott’s face, softening it. “But?”

“But I’m sure, after I graduate, there’ll be a hospital in California that wants to take me.”