Archive of Our Own ^beta

Isaac stares down at the pot on the stove and swipes his mouth with his thumb. Baffled doesn’t even begin to describe what he’s feeling. “I just -" he cuts himself off, not even entirely sure what he’s trying to articulate.

He looks over his shoulder at Scott, who shrugs at him. Smolders, even. Please - Isaac practically invented that look, okay? The puppy dog eyes thing doesn’t even work on him. It doesn’t.

He turns back to the pot and picks up a spatula, poking lightly at the blackened mess of - well, it was supposed to be spaghetti. Isaac has no idea how this all went so terribly wrong.

"I told you, man," Scott says. “I’m really bad at cooking."

"But," Isaac starts. He pokes at the ‘spaghetti’ again and recoils when it seems to poke back at the spatula. “Scott, I think this has become sentient."

Flabbergasted is a good word to describe what Isaac’s feeling. He slides his wide eyed gaze from the stove to Scott and says, “But I walked you through the recipe. You did every step right. I don’t understand how you made this."

Scott exaggerates a frown and brings his hands up as if to say, ‘Don’t look at me!’

Isaac hears a slithering noise and turns a suspicious eye back on the possibly sentient spaghetti. It jiggles when he bumps his hip into the stove on accident. Isaac eyes it with equal parts distrust and distaste.

"We probably need to get rid of this before your mom gets home," Isaac says.

Scott steps toward the stove and his hip presses into Isaac’s. It feels pretty nice.

As they both stare down into the pot of spaghetti, the noodles squelch and start to wriggle.

"Make that definitely," Scott amends, and they spring into action.

*

"So, wait, why do we have to go down into the sewers? No - why do I have to go down into the sewers when you are three strapping young werewolf lads?" Stiles asks.

Derek’s glower could probably peel the paint off a wall. He says, "You're coming with us even if I have to drag you there myself."

"Is this your way of asking me on a date, Derek, because I've got to say I expect dinner, like, at the very least and maybe a make out session, you know, just to make sure we're compat-"

Derek cuts him off. "Deaton thinks there's an alligator monster down there."

Stiles doesn't stop talking, but instead of talking about Derek's lack of game, he's now of the subject of alligator monsters. "Are you shitting me right now, there is no way I'm going down there with an alligator monster. Wait - how big is it? 'Cause if it's like a baby alligator monster, maybe, but if it's, like, giant, I'm out. Not happening. Never in a million years."

Scott and Isaac just stare, bemused.

"Wait - did Deaton actually say 'alligator monster'? Did he use those exact words?" Stiles suddenly has this suspicious look on his face.

Derek rolls his head back, shoulders tense. "No."

"Derek, what did he call it?"

Derek mutters something under his breath and then says, louder, "He called it a gowrow."

Stiles is out of his chair and nearly out of the room before anyone can even blink - he totally would have made it too, Isaac thinks, if he weren't in a room full of werewolves.

Derek has him by the back of the shirt but Stiles kicks and flails like a cat, screeching, "There is no way! No way I am going into the sewers with a twenty-foot alligator-dragon monster, Derek. They have tusks! Tusks! Do you actually hate me, Derek, because I can see no other reason to drag me into a gowrow's sewage lair!"

Derek shakes him by the back of the neck like a misbehaving kitten and says, "Sit down."

Stiles goes limp all at once. He's got this mutinous look on his face, though, and he keeps eyeing the door like he's planning his next escape.

Isaac snorts. Stiles throws a dirty look his way.

"Look," Derek says. "We need a human. You're a human. You are a human that I dislike a tiny bit less than the other humans we know who could help us. You're coming."

Stiles bares his teeth. Derek rolls his eyes.

Scott finally decides it’s time for him to speak up, "So, uh, what part of the sewers are we going to be in?"

Isaac has a sinking feeling about his question.

Scott scratches the back of his neck. At least he has the decency to look embarrassed.

*

Isaac scrapes the burned spaghetti mess down into the sink. He thinks the wriggling must have been their combined imagination - paranoia due to the strange happenings that usually go down in Beacon Hills.

It’s just spaghetti. Spaghetti can’t actually become sentient.

When the mound of spaghetti starts to pull itself out of the drain, however, Scott makes the executive decision to call Deaton.

The sentient spaghetti creature crawls out of the sink and skitters across the counter. If it had eyes, Isaac thinks it would be staring at the two of them.

Seriously, how is this his life?

*

“I’m going to go ahead and state the obvious, here,” Stiles starts. “This is really disgusting.”

“Thank you, Stiles, for that brilliant observation,” Derek says.

Stiles just huffs and continues on through the muck of the tunnels. “I literally just said I was stating the obvious.”

Scott grins and the only reason Isaac can see it is because the light from Stiles’ flashlight glints across his teeth. “Maybe you guys could tone down the flirting?”

Stiles mutters, “Ha ha ha, got a regular comedian over here.”

“Quiet,” Derek hisses. “Do you hear that?”

Stiles hisses back, “Hear what, exactly? Not all of us have super werewolf hearing, asshole.”

Isaac is pretty sure Derek is glaring. It’s like he can actually feel the weight of the glare, even though it’s directed at Stiles. He’s kind of surprised Derek hasn’t flashed his red eyes at Stiles, but he’s starting to realize that Derek doesn’t really wolf out at Stiles. Like, at all. It’s kind of weird, in all honesty, because Derek never really misses an opportunity to flash the ol’ red eyes at anyone else.

Before Derek can speak again, Isaac hears it - a faint rustling noise. It doesn’t sound large enough to be a twenty-foot long alligator monster, though.

“No,” Isaac says. “I hear it too.”

Scott kicks him in the shin.

“Hey! What was that for?”

“It’s probably just some animal who lives down here,” Scott says. He reaches out in the dark and pushes Isaac’s shoulder.

Isaac gets what he’s trying to say. “Oh, oh yeah, you’re right. Totally an animal.”

“What kind of animal makes its home down in a sewer?” Stiles says, disbelief evident in his voice. “Gross.”

“We get it, Stiles,” Derek huffs, exasperated. “You think this is gross. We understand. You don’t actually have to keep repeating yourself every five seconds.”

Stiles shines the flashlight in Derek’s direction. He enunciates, “Dis-gust-ing.”

That is, of course, when they run into the gowrow.

*

Deaton looks at Scott and then back to the spaghetti creature. Usually Deaton is cryptic, but Isaac doesn’t think he’s ever seen him speechless.

The spaghetti creature chatters nonsensically. It hums lowly and spins in a circle. At least, Isaac assumes it spins in a circle. He’s not really sure which side is supposed to be the face.

Deaton turns to Isaac. “Tell me again what happened.”

Isaac shrugs. “I thought it would be fun to teach Scott to cook. Clearly, I was wrong.”

Deaton motions for him to continue. Isaac sighs.

“I walked him through the recipe. He did everything exactly as I said, but it didn’t turn out like it was supposed to. I really don’t know where we went wrong. We thought it was moving, so we tried to send it down the disposal.”

“And then it crawled out of the sink,” Scott added helpfully.

“And it’s been doing that ever since,” Isaac points to where the spaghetti creature moves back and forth over the counter, leaving trails of spaghetti sauce behind it. It kind of looks like a slug, if slugs were made out of noodles and had two tentacle-like appendages. The spaghetti creature lifts up its tentacles and sort of waves them around in the air.

“I have to say, boys, that this is honestly a first for me.”

“So you don’t know what to do?” Isaac asks.

Deaton rubs his hand over his forehead. “Has it tried to do anything aggressive?”

Both Isaac and Scott shake their heads. The spaghetti creature makes low murmuring noises.

“Perhaps you should release it into the wild.”

Isaac stares. “It’s spaghetti.”

Deaton stares back. “It’s also obviously sentient. Do you really want to eat it now?”

Isaac frowns. “Yeah, not really.”

Scott stares at the spaghetti creature. “I’m going to name it.”

Isaac and Deaton both turn and give Scott the same incredulous look.

Scott looks up at them. “What? We can’t keep referring to it as ‘sentient spaghetti creature.’ It’s going to have a complex.”

“Scott,” Isaac says slowly. “Scott, that’s spaghetti.”

Scott frowns. “I made it. If I want to name it, I’m going to name it.”

“What are you going to name it?” Isaac finally asks. What? He’s curious.

Scott is quiet for a long moment. He finally decides, “Marco.”

Deaton cocks his head. “Isn’t that your middle -” He gives up halfway through his question though. He kind of looks like he’s giving up on life.

To be fair, that’s about where Isaac is at this point too.

Deaton smooths the fabric of his pants. “I’m going back to the clinic,” he says as he abandons them.

*

There are animal bones everywhere. The stench in the tunnel is the worst thing Isaac has ever smelled, and he’s been in the boy’s locker room. Scott has his sleeve across his nose and even Derek looks a bit uncomfortable.

Stiles almost steps into a deer carcass - it can’t be too old, because flesh still clings to its bones. He windmills backward and Derek catches him before he can trip and fall into the body. Its eyes are missing from their sockets.

Stiles stares down at the carcass and then up at Derek. He absently pats Derek on the chest and says, “Thanks, buddy.”

Derek just nods.

It’s kind of odd.

There’s a grate directly above their heads and a bit of light filters into the tunnel.

When the gowrow lurches out of the darkness, Isaac almost wishes it was pitch black.

Because Stiles may have described the gowrow as a twenty-foot alligator-dragon monster with tusks, but he never said anything about how it could stand on two legs.

The gowrow hunches over and its front claws drag the ground. A row of spikes jut out of its spine and its tail flicks back and forth, something sharp at the very end smacking the wall with every sweep. Tusks protrude from its jaw and they’re longer than Isaac’s arm.

Stiles edges toward the front of the tunnel, away from the gowrow.

Scott says, voice hoarse, “Did we have an actual plan? Because I want to do that.”

Derek produces a knife out of nowhere - seriously, his pants are way too tight for him to have been hiding it there this whole time, okay? - and hands it back to Stiles. Stiles tries very hard not to take it from him.

“Scott, Isaac, and I will try to incapacitate it.” Isaac is not liking this plan at all. Scott looks like he agrees. “Its underbelly is supposed to be soft, so aim for that. When we do, Stiles, you need to shove that knife into the softest part of its head.”

Stiles is shaking his head wildly. “Why can’t you do that?”

Derek huffs out, “Only a human can kill this thing.”

Stiles is still moving backward. Derek rolls his eyes and motions for Scott and Isaac to get ready.

Isaac’s claws are already out when something occurs to him. “Wait, what do you mean ‘supposed to be’?”

It’s too late, however. Isaac jumps into the fray.

*

Scott slides Marco back into the pot and Isaac wipes the counter down.

That’s how Melissa finds them when she gets off work. She’s puts her keys in the tray by the kitchen door and slips out of her shoes, sighing in relief.

She looks up at the pair and says, “Oh, did you guys make dinner?”

Isaac just stares somewhere over her shoulder and shakes his head. He’s letting Scott field this one.

“Not exactly,” Scott says. He tips the pot in her direction. “Meet Marco.”

Marco waves his noodly appendages in Melissa’s general direction.

Isaac doesn’t even fault her when she screams. He just makes sure to catch her when she faints.

When she comes to, on the couch, Isaac is sitting on the coffee table in front of her and Scott sits in an armchair across the room. He’s got the pot with Marco in it on his lap.

Melissa sits up slowly. She puts a hand on Isaac’s knee and says, “Baby, what have I told you about sitting on the coffee table?”

Isaac grins at her and slides across the gap so he’s sitting on the couch next to her. “Sorry, Ms. McCall.”

She hums under her breath and says, “Please explain what that is.”

Isaac can’t see inside the pot from where he’s sitting, but he does see Marco wave his noodle arms in the air. The thing moves in slow motion, almost. It’s really disconcerting.

“Well, I tried to teach Scott to cook and he made that. It’s,” he shakes his head. He still can’t believe it. “It’s some sort of sentient creature now. I think it knows we’re talking about it too.”

Melissa winces. “Oh, we don’t let Scott in the kitchen. I can’t say he’s ever made anything come alive in there before, but there are still some stains on the ceiling from the last time Scott and Stiles were in there.”

Scott says something low into the pot and Marco chatters back at him. He finally looks up and says, “We called Deaton and he doesn’t know what Marco is. He said we should release him into the wild.”

Melissa carefully nods and doesn’t mention how Scott’s using pronouns to refer to the spaghetti creature. “Maybe you should,” she says. “You can’t very well keep it.”

Scott frowns. He actually looks a bit sad about it, like maybe he actually did want to keep it. “We could go do that now, I guess.”

Melissa nods. “Of all the things, Scott. I mean, you guys are werewolves. I didn’t think I’d see anything that topped that.”

Isaac can’t help it - he laughs.

He giggles all the way out to the driveway. Melissa said they could use her car as long as they didn’t get any spaghetti sauce on the seats. “Your mom’s pretty cool,” he says.

Scott grins, “I know, man.”

Isaac goes to open the passenger side door. One minute, Scott’s standing on the other side of the car and the next minute, he’s face planted onto the ground. Werewolf reflexes, indeed.

Isaac rushes around the car to make sure Scott’s okay - and like, that nothing’s attacking him - when he sees the pot rolling down the driveway.

Scott shouts, “Dude, get Marco!”

Marco, however, has other plans, because he slithers out of the pot and disappears down a sewer grate. Isaac stands at the end of the driveway and looks down into it, but he can’t see anything. “Uh, Scott,” he starts. “It’s gone, man.”

Scott finally picks himself up off the ground and joins Isaac at the end of the driveway. He carefully steps his way around the red trail Marco left behind. “Oh, dude. Yeah, he’s definitely gone.”

Isaac knows this probably isn’t the greatest time, but he says, “So other towns have alligators in the sewers, and we’ve got a spaghetti monster.”

Scott pushes him off the curb. “He’s not a monster,” he says, but he’s still laughing so Isaac counts it as a win.

*

“I didn’t know there would be so much slime,” Stiles says after the deed is done. He looks vaguely worried, but that’s kind of his default state. “Are you sure this stuff’s not poisonous?”

Derek says, “I’m pretty sure Deaton would have mentioned if it was poisonous.”

“Dude never says anything, though.”

Derek grabs Stiles by the shoulders. “You’re okay. You did a good job.”

Stiles looks at Derek for a moment in wonder, before he coughs and says, “Well, of course I did a good job.”

The moment’s broken as quickly as it began.

Scott kicks the gowrow’s corpse in the side and turns to Isaac, “Hey, remember what you said about alligators in the sewers, dude? I guess it wasn’t true.”

Isaac huffs out a laugh. “I guess not.”

Stiles says, “I need to take, like, ten showers. Can we get out of here? I don’t even know how I’m going to explain this to my dad.”

Derek mutters something about how Stiles can take a shower at his place. Stiles looks surprised, but he grins all the same.

As they’re leaving, Isaac hears a something chattering. Scott must hear it too, because he turns around quickly. There’s what must be a service shaft off of the main tunnel, because it’s this tiny narrow space and the noise is coming from out of it. Scott steps forward.

Derek finally notices something’s going on, because he puts himself between the service shaft and Stiles.

Stiles nervously asks, “What’s going on?”

Scott takes one more step forward before a smile breaks across his face. “Look, Isaac, it’s Marco!”

Derek says, “Who the fuck is Marco?”

Scott squats down and waves at the sentient spaghetti creature. Isaac cranes forward to look and is surprised to see that it’s sprouted eyes. He doesn’t even want to know how that happened. Strangers things have happened in the sewers, as they just saw.

Marco raises both of its arms and trills happily when he sees both Scott and Isaac.

“Hey, little dude,” Scott says. Isaac just raises a hand in greeting, because seriously, what is his life?

Isaac looks back and sees Derek and Stiles both standing there staring down at the little spaghetti creature. Stiles opens his mouth once, but then closes it.

Isaac takes pity on them and explains, “I tried to teach Scott to cook a couple weeks ago. Um, Marco is the result. We’re not really sure what went wrong.”

Derek pinches the bridge of his nose. Stiles is still speechless. Scott is talking to Marco quietly.

Finally, Scott pushes against his thighs and stands up. He waves at Marco again and Marco waves his noodly arms back. “We gotta go, Marco. We’ll see you later.”

Marco chirps and sways back and forth. Scott says, “Right on, little dude.”

Stiles leans in toward Derek and asks, “If that thing’s made out of spaghetti, why is it making noises?”

Derek just shakes his head incredulously and pushes Stiles in the direction of the exit.

Marco follows them the entire way, skittering and chirping as it goes. When they get to the exit, it waves its arms once more.

Stiles says, “I think I’ve seen a porno like -”

He doesn’t get to finish because Derek pushes him into a wall. Stiles says, “Ouch, God, stop pushing me into things.”

Derek smirks over his shoulder at Isaac and Scott. He says, “Be nice, Stiles. It’s just saying bye to its parents.”

Derek is such a shit, Isaac swears. Such a shit.

*

“You know,” Scott says, once they’re finally clean from their romp in the sewers. “I’m really glad Marco is happy, even if he’s living his days out in the sewers.”

Isaac doesn’t really know how to respond - because seriously, sentient spaghetti creature, how? Still how? - but he does lean across the bed and kiss Scott on the mouth.

When they finally pull away from each other, Scott grins and says, “This is good too.”