Archive of Our Own

Something has Stiles.

You pace the length of the living room, glancing up at the clock on the wall with growing trepidation. It’s ten o’clock. Stiles texted at eight, said be there soon and you better have my reeses this time you fucker.

It’s ten o’clock, and Stiles still isn’t here, and you know - you know, deep in your gut, that something is wrong.

“Maybe his Jeep broke down again,” Allison says, but anxiety flows off of her in waves, pungent and sour. She doesn’t believe that anymore than you do.

“Yeah,” you say, “Yeah, maybe.”

You’re eight years old when you meet Stiles.

He’s sitting in the corner of the sandbox away from all the other kids, crafting an impressive castle out of buckets of various shapes and sizes.

“Whoa,” you say, and he curls his arms around the castle, bending over into a protective crouch.

“Go away,” he snaps.

You shrug, sitting yourself down on the ground across from him. “That’s really cool. Can I help?”

Stiles lifts his head enough to glare, eyes meeting yours across the divide. He purses his lips and sits up, dropping his arms to his lap and watching you the entire time.

“You can get me some more water,” he says, handing you an empty pail, and you scamper off to find the water fountain. When your mother comes to take you home, you’re covered in sand, sticky from the Italian ice you and Stiles shared, and you’ve never been happier.

Stiles never shows.

Neither does Kira, which you find out when Malia jumps in your bedroom window at five in the morning, fangs in her mouth and claws digging bloody furrows into her palms. It takes two full hours of gentle coaxing from Derek before she manages to shift back.

You call an emergency pack meeting, while the sheriff takes Parrish and sends every available officer on his roster out on patrol.

No one mentions the nogitsune, but it’s written into the way Isaac asks, so what do we do this time, the way Lydia curls forwards, heart speeding faster while Braeden squeezes her shoulder. Malia prowls a hole in the floor behind the couch. She balances on the balls of her feet, eyes flashing, more coyote than girl.

Allison presses her left hand to the center of her chest, twists an arrow between the fingers of her right. “We find him,” she says, and there’s a fire burning behind her eyes. You believe her.

You’re ten years old when Stiles’ mother dies.

He disappears after the service, ripping his tie off of his neck and running into the woods. You let go of your mother’s hand, ignoring both her and the sheriff calling you back as you chase after him.

You find him sitting against the old oak tree behind his house, clothes wrinkled and covered in ashy dirt. He stares down at his scraped palms and picks at the edges of a hole in the knee of his pants.

You sit beside him and don’t say a word, shoulders touching as you pass your Game Boy back and forth. Stiles doesn’t say thank you - you don’t know it yet, but he won’t speak again for weeks. He does give you a tiny smile.

They find the Jeep on the outskirts of Beacon County at the farthest end of the preserve, the front end smashed against a tree. The remaining pieces of Stiles’ phone are scattered along the highway.

There’s blood on the ground.

“He fought back,” Braeden says from where she’s crouched on the side of the road, eyeing the skid marks and footprints in the dirt.

Derek follows his scent, but it stops ten feet away from the crash site. Like he was never there at all. Your chest tightens so you can barely breathe.

Your only consolation is that Lydia hasn’t screamed.

You’re thirteen the first time you kiss.

You’re laying on your bed, Stiles pressed against your side. He’s rambling on about Lydia’s perfect hair and perfect face and perfect everything, and how he caught her making out with Jackson behind the bleachers on the lacrosse field, and how can she date that douche? You ignore the itch behind your ribs every time he talks about her.

“...and I’m so pathetic, I’ve never even kissed anyone!” He finishes. Your attention zings back like a boomerang.

“Dude, neither have I.” You grin and knock your shoulders together. “We can be pathetic together.”

“Ooooor, we can kiss each other.” Stiles clears his throat. “You know. For science and the greater good. The greater good being us no longer being kiss virgins.”

“Is that even a thing?” you ask, but you’re already turning onto your side, curling closer to Stiles. He grins and mashes your mouths together, all breathless enthusiasm. Your noses crash. You yelp, pulling back and rubbing your face.

“First time doesn’t count,” Stiles grumbles, wiggling his nose. He drops his hand, and you slowly lean towards him, wait until he closes the distance to press your lips against his. It’s wet and a bit messy and uncoordinated, but your stomach swoops, heart beating faster.

“Does that count?” You’re surprised when your voice cracks.

Stiles’ cheeks are red. His boner presses against your hip. “Yeah.” He smirks. “Wanna do it again?”

He doesn’t give you a chance to answer, just leans in and fits your mouths together, and you think, yes. Yes.

Days pass before you have any leads. You’re going crazy, prone to outbursts of anger that only Allison’s touch can quell.

Then, Chris calls, says get here, now. It’s three AM.

He eyes Scott with trepidation as he plays the video sent to his phone - Stiles sitting on the floor in a white-tiled room, wrists chained to the wall. Kira lays unconscious on the ground. The side of his face is bruised. His shoes are missing.

Your fangs push through your gums, claws lengthening into sharp points. You jump out the window when Chris yells, land on your feet, throw back your head, and howl. You run and you run and you run.

Allison finds you. Of course she does. You’re huddled in the corner of Stiles’ bed with his red hoodie cradled carefully between clawed hands. She kisses the corner of your lips, holds your face between her palms, and stays that way until sunrise.

You get bitten by a werewolf at sixteen.

You also meet Allison. She’s sweet and she’s funny and you don’t care that she’s a hunter. You’re in love from the moment you pass her that pen in English class.

Your first kiss sends sparks shooting across your skin, the touch of her hands calming the wolf while simultaneously making you want to explode.

Then you meet Derek, and it all goes to shit.

You and Allison break up. The alpha wants you, but Allison doesn’t and it feels a little bit like dying. Stiles tries to comfort you, figure out what makes the wolf tick, but you ignore him and make out with Lydia instead.

You deserve it when Stiles ties you to that radiator and treats you like a dog.

For all that Stiles claims that things are fine, there’s a rift between you now that wasn’t there before, an ever-growing distance you don’t know how to close.

Things aren’t the same. You wonder if they ever will be.

Chris manages to track the video to a hunter safe house in southern California.

“Allison,” he says, gripping her shoulder when the pack lurches into action, “They wouldn’t have sent this if they didn’t want to be found.”

Allison picks up a crossbow, testing the tension in the spring before she fires it at the wall. “Good.”

“This is too easy,” Isaac says as you get in Allison’s car, following Chris as he barrels down the street.

He’s right; they hit a bump in the road, and Chris’ car spins out, coming to rest on the highway entry ramp. Allison hits the breaks, but it’s too late - you hurl yourself out of your seat, covering as much of her body as possible as the SUV flips over, landing on the passenger side.

The sound of metal sliding over concrete makes your ears ring, and you bite back a noise of pain as the windshield breaks. The glass shards rip your back to shreds, but it doesn’t matter. You’ll heal. Allison won’t.

You smell smoke and gunpowder as Malia wrenches the door completely off of the frame, gripping you by your underarms and tugging you out. She lays you on the ground, then goes back for Allison, rips through the seat belt with her bare hands.

You brush your hands over Allison’s face as Malia grabs Isaac, cataloguing her injuries: twisted wrist, scraped cheek, bruised mouth. “Are you okay?”

“You’re bleeding,” she says by way of answer, eyes wide when her hands slide over your back. She twists her head around with a gasp. “Isaac --”

The car explodes. Lydia’s scream echoes across the lot.

Somehow, things only get worse.

Derek is the alpha now.

His pack is full of volatile, broken teenagers, there’s a homicidal lizard on the loose. Chris wants to kill you, Gerard wants to use you, and everything is shit.

“Everything, huh?” Allison says, grinning. She lifts her head from where she was sucking a bruise at the curve of your neck. You let out a whine of complaint that turns into a groan when she sticks her hand down your pants. “Even this?”

Your head thumps against the ground. “Okay. Maybe not everything.”

Allison watches your face with heat in her eyes as she strokes you through your underwear. She kisses you when you come.

You almost lost Isaac.

Malia is still in the hospital, second degree burns across the left side of her body that won’t heal. She barely pulled him from the car in time; Derek performed CPR on the side of the road until the paramedics came, muttered, come on, come on. His heart started beating, a single blip that steadily grew stronger. He’s still in the hospital, too.

You don’t have any time to regroup; the hunters send another video, this time to Lydia. You and Allison huddle around the screen. Lydia’s fingers tremble when she presses play.

Stiles sits Indian style on the floor of the same room, fingers rapping against his knee, shivering and bruised but alive. Kira lies next to him with her head in his lap.

“Don’t worry about me, Scotty,” he says, cocking a half smile. There’s a cut at the corner of his mouth. “I’m right as rain.” He pauses, looks at the ceiling and bites his lip. “What does that even mean anyway?”

That’s enough, a male voice snaps from somewhere out of frame. Stiles huffs and rolls his eyes.

His smile dims when he looks back at the camera. “They said to give you a message - one week.” Stiles glares and he leans forwards. “You better find us, Scott, or I swear to god, I will haunt you for the rest of your -” The video cuts off.

You bite through your lip to keep the howl stuck behind your teeth.

You die when you’re sixteen.

Stiles clutches his father’s badge in his fist. Allison’s fingers shake, but she reaches for both of you, squeezes your hands, holds on tight while Isaac presses his hands to her shoulders. You shudder as you submerge yourself in the icy water, hear Stiles say, see you on the other side right before Deaton pushes you under.

The first few minutes are agony, your lungs burning from lack of oxygen. You open your mouth to take a breath just before your head explodes, and then --

You wake up a white room, gasp as you pull air into your lungs. The sound of two heartbeats reach your ears, one faster than the other, familiar scents filling your nose - cinnamon and wet grass, gunpowder and a summer storm, trailing you through the woods as you look for a dead body, as you’re almost run over by a car.

Stiles and Allison. The two people you love most.

The three of you come alive again, still holding hands. Together.

You tell Stiles’ dad. You don’t have any choice, not when Stiles’ life is at stake. He tears you a new one for not coming to him first, and the cloying scent of his desperation makes your head spin.

He goes to the safe house with the entire department behind him, armed to the teeth. They don’t find Stiles. They don’t find anyone.

The hunters send a video straight to Scott this time. Stiles is strapped down to a metal chair in a small, dim room. His fingers tap against the arm of the chair, the same way they tapped against his knee. Electric wires wrap around each leg, leading straight to Kira’s fingers. A broad man stands behind her, face hidden in the shadows. His fingers dig into her shoulder.

“Alpha McCall,” a woman’s voice taunts, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

There’s a pause as she steps out from behind the screen - big blue eyes, dirty blonde hair, a limp in her left leg.

“Do you know how many volts the human body can tolerate before the heart gives out?” She arches an eyebrow. “Would you like to find out?”

Kira shakes her head, tears streaming down her face. The man holds a knife to her throat.

“It’s okay,” Stiles rasps out, “Kira, it’s okay. Do it.”

Kira clenches her eyes shut. The wires crackle to life.

The video cuts off to the sound of Stiles’ screams.

Your entire body jerks, like you’re the one who’s been electrocuted, and the phone drops from your hands. You walk over to the window, clenching your fingers around the frame until your knuckles turn white. You’ve never felt so powerless in your life.

Allison tugs you against her chest, wraps trembling arms around your waist and presses her face against your shoulder.

“We’re going to get him back,” she whispers into your ear, voice like steel, “And when we do, I’m going to kill them.”

You’re the alpha now.

That power runs through your veins, electrifies you, whispers pack, pack, pack, while the darkness around your heart grows stronger, takes over.

Allison wraps herself around you in the middle of the night. You’re the alpha, but you’re powerless as she presses her hips against yours, presses a knife to your throat.

“Allison,” you whisper, and a bead of blood runs between your collar bones. “Allison!”

She gasps, heart racing, eyes wide. The knife clatters to the floor. She rolls off of you and curls herself around her knees, chokes out a litany of apologies. You lift her chin, brush the tears from her cheeks with your thumb, tug her into your arms.

Then, Stiles goes missing.

Your mother finds him at the nemeton, hypothermic and screaming. He doesn’t remember how he got there, he tells you when you visit him at the hospital. He doesn’t remember anything.

Allison lets go of your hand and crawls into bed at Stiles’ back, ignoring his half-hearted protests. She tugs his back against her chest, raises an eyebrow until you sigh, slip out of your jacket, and slide into the bed. It’s a tight fit, arms and legs wrapped together into a messy pile of limbs.

“You love him, don’t you?” Allison asks when Stiles finally drops off, carding her fingers through his hair. You stiffen, because you can’t lie. Not to her. Not about this.

She kisses the top of Stiles’ head, lips lingering. “It’s okay, you know,” she reaches for your hand resting on his hip, “If you do.”

You swallow hard. “Yeah. I do.”

Time looms at the back of your mind like a bomb about to explode. You’re at the end of your rope.

The sheriff calls in a couple of favors, has an expert look over the footage. You watch the videos again and again until you’ve memorized every word, every move Stiles makes from the shift of his legs to the rhythm of his fingers against his knee. Isaac is still in the hospital, healing as slowly as if he were human. Malia checked herself out.

Derek asks if you’ve heard from the hunters again. You haven’t.

“He’s still alive,” you say, realize too late you should have said they.

Derek stares, eyes boring into yours. You scratch your nose, knee bouncing up and down. “What?”

“You love him,” he says, and you breathe in deep, breathe out deeper.

“Yes. But I love Allison, too.” You give him a half smile. “She’s my soulmate.”

Derek doesn’t run with the joke, like Stiles would have. He clasps his hand down on your shoulder and squeezes tight. “Who says you can’t have more than one?”

The door slams open before you have a chance to respond, banging against the wall.

“We figured it out,” Allison says, breathless as she crosses the loft. “His fingers in the third video right before Kira --” She cuts herself off, swallowing the words back down. “He was sending us a message. It’s morse code.”

“You know where he is?” you ask, already rising out of your seat on the couch.

Allison nods and gives you a grim smile. “I know where he is.”

The nogitsune is dead.

He almost took Allison and Stiles with him, and you pace across the floors of the hospital, won’t leave until they’re moved out of ICU.

Your mother manages to get them into the same recovery room, and she kisses your hair as you slip inside. Stiles’ skin is as pale as the sheets and there’s a bandage across Allison’s chest, but you don’t need the monitors to hear their heartbeats - loud, steady, strong.

You sleep curled around Allison’s hip, leave only long enough to change your clothes and shower before coming back. Chris gives up trying to kick you out.

Stiles doesn’t smile anymore, barely even speaks. He scoots to the side of his bed furthest away from you, like he’s afraid you’re going to break if he gets too close.

You tell him to stop blaming himself, and Stiles punches you in the face, hard enough that he breaks skin.

“You don’t get to tell me that,” Stiles rasps while the monitors whine. “I remember twisting that sword in your stomach. I remember liking it.” He makes a frustrated noise in the back of a throat, like the whimper of a wolf. “I can’t forget - I can’t -”

You tug him forward, get your arms around his waist, Stiles’ tears warm against your skin. Allison reaches out until she can wrap her fingers around his wrist. Stiles tries to flinch away, but she just holds him tighter, doesn’t let him go.

You haven’t been back at the train depot since Derek moved to the loft, before banshees and kitsunes were even a blip on your radar. There’s a line of cars further back, and you tilt your head as the whir of electricity reaches your ears. You inhale - dust, metal, and underneath that, just the slightest hint of cinnamon.

He’s been under your nose the entire fucking time.

“They’re here,” you whisper, taking a step forward. Allison pulls you back, but it’s too late - your ankle catches on a trip wire, sets off a trap that goes off with a loud, warning snap.

The full moon burns bright in the sky, and when the hunters exit one of the train cars, your pack rushes forward, bloodthirsty, vengeful. You make no move to control them. Lydia throws knives with deadly precision, catching one of the men in the chest. Braeden gets shot in the leg, goes down hard, smirks when Derek rips her attacker’s throat out.

You and Malia rush towards the train just as the blonde hunter from the video finally makes her appearance. She smirks at you, firing off a round of bullets. One pierces your thigh. Another catches Malia in the hip. You drop to your knees and grind your teeth against the burn of wolfsbane in your blood.

You roll to your feet and wrap your claws around her throat before she can get another shot off. Her gun presses against your belly.

“I believe we’re at an impasse, alpha,” she says; her finger never leaves the trigger.

“No,” you say, voice like steel, “We’re not.”

Allison shoots an arrow straight through her heart.

Your mother convinces Stiles to see a therapist.

He slams the business card down in front of you and Allison, glaring at the small piece of cardstock like it’s offended him. “If I have to go through this nonsense, then so do you.”

So you go, too. It’s surprisingly freeing.

The three of you heal together, a slow process that gets better as time passes. Your life goes on as if nothing has changed, even though everything has.

One day, Stiles laughs at something Allison says; your head snaps up at the sound.

“What?” he grumbles, rubbing at the back of his head. “I can’t laugh now?”

It’s surprisingly easy to watch Allison lean forward and brush their mouths together. Stiles startles and lets out a sound of surprise.

“What was that?” he asks, eyes wide.

“A kiss.” A smirk tugs at the edge of her mouth. “If you don’t know what a kiss is, then we’re in more trouble than I thought."

Stiles’ eyes narrow, but there’s a smile quirking his lips as they kiss again. She reaches her arm up to wrap around his neck, hissing when the movement tugs at her wound.

You take her pain, wincing as your veins turn black. Stiles turns your head with a finger under your chin, hums a little as his lips press against yours.

You blink your eyes open, sufficiently distracted. “Even better than last time,” Stiles murmurs, kissing you again, quick and chaste.

Allison raises her eyebrows. “Last time?” Stiles laughs while you groan, dropping your head into your hands.

You find Stiles in the last train car on the lot. He and Kira are slumped against the wall, hands chained tight behind their backs. Malia tugs Kira free and buries her face in her hair.

Stiles squints his eyes open, scent sweet with relief. “Took you long enough,” he gasps, and you laugh. Allison presses a kiss to his mouth.

When you get him to the hospital, he won’t let you out of his sight, not even when his father shows up and gives him a hug so tight that he cringes.

He clings to your hands, letting go just long enough for your mother to check him over, while the sheriff hovers over her shoulder. There’s a cut along his forehead that’s red and swollen, bruising around his ribs - apparently, I talk too much, Stiles says, wincing as she wraps a bandage around his chest. Your hand tightens around his, taking his pain, and he relaxes against the pillows with a grateful smile.

“Knew I kept you around for something,” he says, and Melissa chuckles, pressing a kiss to his forehead and ushering his father out.

When they leave, he tells you everything - how word traveled down the hunter grapevine that there was a true alpha in Beacon Hills, one of the same wolves who brought the Argent family to their knees.

“Well, they have that part right at least,” Allison says with a grin before you can start blaming yourself. Your face turns red. Stiles laughs.

You fall in love again at seventeen.

Months after the nogitsune, and you wake with the sun shining through Allison’s window and a heavy weight on your legs.

You glance down to find Stiles’ head pillowed on your thigh, his hand wrapped around Allison's arms at your waist. You wonder how he could possibly be comfortable when he groans, squinting an eye open and looking at you upside down.

“Morning,” he grumbles; his hair sticks up, the ends tangled around each other, and you lean down without thinking, pressing a kiss to his lips.

Stiles kisses back, lips slightly chapped. His free hand comes up to frame your face. Allison's arm tightens around your waist, and you turn to find her staring at the both of you, eyes hooded.

She climbs over your legs, leaning down to kiss Stiles. His hand traces the curve of her jaw, the other coming to rest at her hip. You kneel up to kiss her neck, the tender skin behind her ear, and Allison arches her neck back, gasping, hand gripping tight at Stiles' shoulders.

“Holy shit,” she gasps; Stiles grins, turning her around. She pours herself into your mouth, lips and teeth and tongue, hands gliding over your ribcage.

Stiles groans, and Allison glances over her shoulder, tossing him a sly grin. “You should kiss him, too,” she says, shifting backwards to kneel at the edge of the bed.

Stiles fists a hand in your shirt, tugging you closer. You kiss him harder than you kissed Allison, drag your hands up under Stiles' shirt, cupping his waist.

Allison watches, eyes on fire.

Stiles heals slowly. It’s the fallout from the nogitsune all over again, only this time, Stiles keeps you close - presses against your side as you watch movies on his computer, drags his hand through Allison’s hair while she lays her head in his lap.

There are days your pack surrounds you, crowding on the bed, too many bodies in too small a space. You never thought you would enjoy hearing Stiles and Isaac snipe at each other.

Allison chuckles and presses a kiss to Stiles’ thigh, and that’s the way of things for a while - short, gentle kisses, careful to stop at the first sign of pain.

Until Stiles rolls you over and presses you down against the bed.

“You’re killing me here,” he groans against your mouth; it's hot, wet, messy, too close to the full moon, but neither of them care. Allison tugs her shirt over her head and your fingers press bruises against her hips, into the dip of Stiles’ spine. Their nails rake down your back like claws. You want to put your claim on both of them, keep them close, safe. They wear your mark in the shape of your teeth at the curve of their necks.

Allison promises to find a way for them to mark you too, whispers it like a dirty promise. You tackle her to the bed while Stiles laughs.

You wear their marks like a badge.