Chapter Text
Stiles shakes Mikael’s hand and thanks Lena again for treating his wound, and then the group of them head to the door. They find Allison downstairs in the lobby, talking with her father, Julien, Sam, and Jake. She smiles over at them and gives Scott a kiss, which results in Chris’ usual glower. But after a moment, he turns to Stiles and asks grudgingly, “How’s your leg?”
“Not as bad as it could be,” Stiles says. “Probably shouldn’t walk on it too much. I hear things in there went pretty well.”
“Given the givens,” Chris says.
“So, do you happen to know when your cousin Henry is scheduled to depart our fine city?”
Chris’ eyes narrow. Then he says, “I have a copy of his itinerary in my email,” and pulls his phone out of his pocket. He taps away at it for several minutes in that manner of a middle-aged man who is not altogether comfortable with technology, and finally says, “Their plane leaves at three thirty.”
Stiles checks his watch. “Gonna be close,” he says. “They’d better man up and sign the papers. Oh, that reminds me! They need your signature, too. I’d better get them from my car.” Without another word, he trots off.
“What is he talking about?” Chris asks.
“Uh . . .” Scott says.
Allison gives her father an uncertain smile and says, “Stiles told Henry and his wife that he wasn’t going to let them out of the tiger pit until they’d signed paperwork yielding legal custody of Jake to, uhm, to you and Mom.”
Chris blinks at her. He blinks at Jake, who shrinks away. Finally, he says, “Why? I mean, why to me? Since the general ‘why’ is obvious.”
“I think he figured that they wouldn’t agree if it was to sign custody over to Papa Stilinski or some pack-related person,” Erica says, twining a strand of her hair around her finger. “You always wanted a son, right? You look like the type.”
Chris pushes a hand back through his hair. “Sometimes, I could just throttle that kid.”
“I’m sorry,” Jake says hastily.
“Not you,” Chris says, irritated.
“Look, it’s just a formality,” Scott says. “I mean, he can stay with us. We just had to have someone’s name to put on the paperwork. You don’t have to – ”
“No,” Chris says, his voice a little sharper than necessary or perhaps even than he means it, because he gentles it a moment later. “No. That’s okay.” He looks over at Jake and puts a hand on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “I’ll sign whatever I need to sign.”
Jake stares at him for a long moment before he turns away, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. Allison steps up beside him and puts an arm around his waist, pressing the side of her body into his, a gesture of reassurance and comfort that’s mostly pack, but partly family. She smiles up at Stiles as he comes back in with the paperwork. Chris gets a pen from the hotel staff and signs where Stiles tells him to.
“Do you want to come back to the den with us?” Stiles asks Jake. “To see them before they leave?”
Jake hesitates, and then shakes his head. “No. I – I just – they would say something awful, and I, I think they’ve made me feel bad enough for one week.”
Allison gives him a squeeze. “Good thinking,” she says. She looks over at Sam and his father and says, “What about you, when does your plane leave?”
“We actually decided to stay a few more days,” Julien says. “Chris and I wanted some time to catch up without there being crises to attend to or people looking over our shoulder.”
“Cool,” Stiles says. He turns to Sam and says, “You wanna come over tonight? The rest of my pack is going to be back in town by then. You could meet them.”
“I’d like that,” Sam says.
Julien clears his throat and says, “I presume that you guys won’t want to spend any more time with Henry and his wife than absolutely necessary, so . . . why don’t I pick their luggage up from Chris’ house and meet you back at yours? I can give them a ride to the airport.”
“That works,” Stiles says, with a nod. He had been planning to make them walk back to Chris’ to get their stuff, but this will work better. There’s no chance they’ll run into Jake and have an opportunity to make him miserable. And he really doesn’t want them to miss their plane. The longer they’re in town, the more annoyed he’ll be. “Thanks.”
“Not a problem,” Julien says. “He is my cousin, after all. In fact, I think I’ll go visit them in a few months. I haven’t seen Phillip since he was a toddler. It’ll be nice to see how he’s growing up.”
Stiles can read the undertones there, the fact that Julien is offering to keep an eye on Henry and see how he’s raising his son, make sure he’s not being abused or taught that all werewolves are the devil, and explain to the boy why his older brother had to leave. It takes a weight off his shoulders. He knew that Jake had been quietly, privately worried about what his little brother was going to think, what he might say if they met again. He gives Julien a smile and thanks him again. So does Jake, and Julien responds by giving him a hug so tight that he nearly turns purple.
The group of them heads for the exit. They find Wednesday standing outside with a suitcase, waiting for her taxi to arrive. “Let us give you a ride to the airport,” Stiles says.
Derek clears his throat. “We have things we need to do.”
“I guess it probably wouldn’t be polite to make the Argents miss their flight back to whatever black hole they came from,” Stiles says, and sighs. They need to see Ian off, too. That’s likely to be a different sort of can of worms. “Okay, fine.” He holds a hand out to the girl and says, “Lemme see your phone.”
“What for?” she asks, frowning at him.
“’Cause I’m gonna put my number in it, duh,” Stiles says. Wednesday arches her eyebrows at him, and he shrugs. “Just in case you ever need anything. Or if you have questions on how to snag an eligible werewolf bachelor.”
“You would be the person to ask, I suppose,” she says, handing her phone over. Stiles just grins at her and programs his number in before handing it back. She takes it and says, “Well, if you ever happen to be in Kentucky, come say hi.”
“So you do live in Kentucky!” Stiles says, grinning at her.
“Of course I do,” she says, without even a hint of inflection, and then heads over to the taxi that’s pulling up, leaving Stiles chortling behind her.
Allison decides to go with her family back to the house because she thinks Jake might be more comfortable that way, and of course Scott wants to go with her. Chris grudgingly agrees to this, so Stiles heads back to the den with Derek and Erica for company. Which is fine with him. He feels like he can relax and actually breathe for the first time in days. He takes out his phone and calls Lydia.
“Hey, where you at?” he asks when she picks up.
“Long Beach,” she says. “You’re missing some great beach weather.”
“Hey, we have all summer for beaches,” he says. “Just calling to give you guys the all-clear. As far as I know, all the hunters are heading for airports and will be out of here by three or four. If you start heading back now, by the time you get here, they’ll be gone.”
“Sounds good to me,” she says.
“Just so you know, I, uh, may have gotten beat up a little?” Stiles says, and Lydia lets out a growl which is not at all like her. “You know, there was a tournament and stuff, so I’m a little bruised. Don’t freak out when you see me. ‘Kay?”
“We’ll see,” Lydia says, and hangs up.
Derek lets out a snort of laughter as Stiles tucks his phone away, looking disconcerted. “They’re going to kick the shit out of you,” he says.
“I know,” Stiles says, with a sigh. “Maybe I even deserve it.” He frowns into his rearview mirror suddenly, looking at Erica. “How did you and Scott get back here, anyway? Whose car did you steal?”
“Danny’s,” she says, looking somewhat chagrined. “We left a note!”
“Oh, thank God,” Stiles says, “you two will be in more trouble than me.”
“Not after they get a look at your neck,” Erica shoots back.
“She’s right,” Derek says.
Stiles ignores them. “Hey, but anyway, we learned something valuable about the pack bond today. It degrades over distance. They couldn’t tell I was in trouble. We should do some scientific studies on this. You know, to sort out what could happen if we’re split up in the future . . . not that we ever will be,” he says hastily, as Derek and Erica both glare at him. “But like when I go to Fresno to see Gwen, or when the lacrosse team has away games but not everybody wants to come, stuff like that. It would be good to know!”
“I suppose,” Derek grumps.
Stiles just smiles and turns the radio on and heads back to the house. He walks up to the edge of the pit with the papers and a pen in one hand. “Oh, you’re still here?” he says, feigning surprise. “I thought you guys had a plane to catch in . . .” He ostentatiously checks his watch. “A little less than two hours. Man, you like to live dangerously. Doesn’t it take time to check all your guns through security and shit?”
“Just let us out of here, you son of a bitch!” Henry yells.
Stiles holds the papers and pen over the edge and drops them. “As soon as you’ve both signed.”
Henry snatches the pen from the air and then grabs the papers. He scribbles his signature down on the page and then glares at his wife. “What? I’m not going to rot down here for that pathetic brat that you keep swearing is my son. Sign the damned papers!”
Stiles arches his eyebrows and thinks that that’s an interesting dynamic he wishes he had stumbled onto earlier. It would have made this a lot easier. Now he wonders if Jake really is related to the Argents. It doesn’t matter, though. Chris has custody and obviously considers him family, so that makes him an Argent as much as any DNA ever would.
Rose grabs the pen away from him and says, “You can blame me for the way Jake came out all you want, but it’s still your fault that we’re at the bottom of this damned pit!”
“Okay, guys,” Stiles says, “I’m not a marriage counselor. Let’s get this over with.”
Rose glares at him but then scrawls her name down. “Are you happy now, you little shit?”
“Ecstatic,” Stiles says. “It means I can get you off my property and out of my territory.” He gestures to Derek, who’s been tying a rope to a nearby tree. At Stiles’ direction, he tosses it down into the pit. Minutes later, both Henry and Rose are standing next to it, glaring daggers at each other. “Okay, let’s get you on your way,” Stiles says, using his remote to disarm the electric fence and open the panel. He points, and they shove past him and onto the other side. He closes it behind them.
“Wait!” Henry says. “How are we supposed to get to the airport?”
Stiles checks his watch again, then smiles and says, “Not my circus, not my monkey.” And then he turns and walks back towards the house, listening to them fume and protest on the other side of the fence. It’s a glorious feeling.
“I thought Julien was coming to pick them up,” Erica says in an undertone.
Stiles shrugs. “Sure, but they don’t know that. Julien can’t get past the outer fence. They’ll find him when they get that far, waiting for them.”
Erica giggles. “You are the worst,” she says, with a speculative gleam in her eye.
“Do not give me that look right now, I have to change out of these damp clothes and go meet Ian,” Stiles says. “The sooner he’s out of here, the happier we’ll all be. Capisce?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Erica says, and doesn’t even offer to help him change, which is a sure sign that she too wants to get Ian the hell off their territory. Stiles jogs upstairs and strips out of the clothes he’s wearing, then puts on a T-shirt and a pair of denim shorts. He puts his chain mail back on because he doesn’t trust Ian and then heads back downstairs.
“We good to go?” he asks, grabbing his baseball bat from the umbrella stand by the door that holds a variety of weapons.
Erica blinks at it. “I thought you – ”
“Fuck no, I didn’t bring the real one this morning,” Stiles says. “It took me weeks to make this. The one I had earlier was my backup. The wire’s just regular barbed wire and it wasn’t even stapled on.”
“But I thought he reacted like that because he got a mouthful of silver,” Erica says.
“No, he reacted like that because I told him to react like that,” Stiles says. “Pretty much the entire damned fight was choreographed. Except, you know, for the friggin’ fire.”
Derek growls.
“On that note, let’s go,” Stiles says, and heads out the back door. They cross the property, Stiles disarms the fence, and they all climb over. It’s about a ten minute walk to the old Hale house, where they’ve agreed to meet Ian.
He’s waiting for them outside the fence, sitting on the freezer that Stiles had been in earlier. Part of their agreement had been that he would transform into something strong enough to lift the damned thing and get it off their property. Stiles narrows his eyes at Peter’s pleasant smile and says, “You were supposed to take that thing somewhere.”
Ian just shrugs. “I don’t know where the town dump is. Besides, there’s no point in wasting a perfectly good freezer.”
Derek looks at him for a long moment. Then, slowly, a smile spreads over his face. He takes a few steps forward and suddenly punches Ian so hard in the face that he falls backwards, literally going head-over-heels and landing hard on his back on the ground. Stiles lets out a snort of laughter as Ian attempts to pick himself up.
“I suppose I deserved that,” Ian says.
“For so, so many reasons,” Stiles agrees. “I mean, seriously, you had one job. No fire.”
Ian shrugs a little. “It’s not my fault the old biddy was afraid of a fire demon.”
Derek growls at him. “You also weren’t supposed to cause any serious injuries.”
“Well, you’re the ones who didn’t define ‘serious’ for me,” Ian says.
“I don’t like this guy,” Stiles says. “He’s too much like me.”
Derek sighs. “He’s too much like Peter.”
Stiles just shakes his head and gestures for Ian to follow him. “C’mon. Things to do and people to see. You remember the details of our agreement, right?”
Ian raises a hand in the Boy Scout salute and says, “I will never set foot on your territory again, and I will never take the form of Peter Hale or Kate Argent ever again, world without end, amen.”
“Okey dokey,” Stiles says.
“Can I send a postcard every once in a while?” Ian asks. “Call you on skype? Nobody’s ever given me a run for my money before.”
Erica lets out a snort of laughter. “I think he’s got a crush, Stiles.”
Stiles just shakes his head, thinking back to the look on Ian’s face when they gave him a name. “I guess I can’t stop you from sending the occasional postcard,” he says. Derek glowers but doesn’t actively protest. They walk through the preserve to where Stiles left his Jeep, and load Ian into it. It’s about a half hour’s drive to the edge of the county. Stiles turns the radio up and rolls the windows down because he doesn’t want to have any sort of conversation. They pull over just past the county line and he gestures. “Get out.”
Ian hops out of the car. “Catch you on the flip side,” he says, and then vanishes.
~ ~ ~ ~
By the time Stiles has checked in with his father to assure him that everything went to plan and that all homicidal parties are on their way out of town, then stopped by the grocery store to restock after the hectic week, Scott and Allison have made it back to the house. They haven’t brought the other Argent teens with them. Sam is hanging out with Chris and Julien. Victoria, meanwhile, has taken Jake to go shopping. He’s going to need things like clothes, and it’s doubtful that his parents will send any of his possessions.
“Man, I don’t envy him right now,” Stiles says, thinking of what spending an entire afternoon with Victoria Argent would be like. “No offense, Allison.”
Scott lowers his voice a little and says, “Allison asked him if he wanted us to come with, and he said no, because, and I quote, ‘your mom is really nice’.”
“Holy crap,” Erica says.
Stiles lets out a snort. “I guess compared to his own mother, she would be,” he says, and shakes his head, going into the kitchen. The apples from the muffins he was going to make are okay, since Allison put them in the fridge. He scrapes the messed up dough out of the bowl and dumps it in the sink for Erica to deal with later, and starts over.
Derek comes up behind him and wraps an arm around his waist. He just stands there for a moment, pressing his cheek against Stiles’ ear. “You’re getting too tall,” he gripes after a moment.
“Sorry,” Stiles says, amused. “I come from a family of late bloomers.”
“You’re not allowed to get taller than me,” Derek says.
“Duly noted,” Stiles says, carefully re-reading the recipe before he starts measuring.
Derek’s quiet for a few moments. “You should get some sleep,” he finally says.
“You’re not wrong,” Stiles agrees, “but the pack’s going to be back soon and I’ll sleep better once they’re here. What’s a few more hours? Besides, I had way too much Adderall this morning to sleep right now. That’s why I’m going to bake and cook. If I sat down in front of my computer, I’d have a sixteen page research paper on corporate terrorism written by the time I passed out.”
Derek grumbles and says, “I’m going to clean up some of my stuff and work in my studio for a while. You’ll be okay?”
“Yep,” Stiles says, digging for a teaspoon. “I’ll call you when there’s a spatula for you.”
Derek nods, ruffles Stiles’ hair, and then heads out of the kitchen. Stiles puts on some loud music and gets to work. Presumably, people are going to want dinner, and the pack will be showing up around the dinner hour anyway. He decides to make Mexican food, because that’s labor intensive. Or at least it is when he does it, because he makes his own guacamole and salsa. It’s not something he always does, but when he’s looking to spend a day in the kitchen distracting himself, it works.
Sam and Jake arrive around six thirty. They call from outside the gate and Allison goes out to let them in and walk them down the road. It’s nearly a mile to get all the way to the outer fence, so it takes a little while, but they don’t seem to mind. Jake is dressed in what are obviously new jeans and a T-shirt with a band logo on it. He’s obviously very excited about the shirt. Sam relates that Chris and Julien have decided to go to a bar, and as far as he can tell, they plan to stay there and drink all night. This amuses Stiles. He texts Chris to say ‘let me know if you need a designated driver’. Chris texts him back asking him to politely go to hell.
“That smells really good,” Sam says, watching him push the taco meat around in the skillet. “I’ve been thinking I should learn the basics of cooking. I might be living off campus next year.”
“Oh, yeah?” Stiles says. “Well, this shit is easy. You ever see one of those ‘taco spice’ packets in the grocery?”
“Yeah, sure,” Sam says.
“Okay,” Stiles says. “The first thing you need to do is throw that shit away.”
Sam lets out a snort of laughter despite himself.
“Cooking’s not hard,” Stiles says. “It’s just a matter of a lot of trial, error, and pizza delivery when the errors outweigh the trials.” He grabs a few bags of shredded cheese out of the fridge and starts making everything look pretty. He doesn’t need to set it all up as a buffet, but hey, why not? While he’s in there, he grabs another can of Mountain Dew. He can’t remember the last time he was so caffeinated; it feels awesome.
His hearing isn’t as good as the wolves’, but he knows when his pack is almost there. He’s rocking back and forth on his heels, bouncing, brimming with excitement that nearly overflows. “Are, uh, are you okay?” Sam asks, and then Stiles hears the noise of the fence and he just drops everything and bolts out of the house. Behind him, he hears thuds and clatters as every other pack member joins him.
Lydia pulls through the gap in the gate and brings her car to a halt as soon as it’s all the way inside, rather than driving up to the house the way she normally would. This is because the others are already getting out of the car and she doesn’t want to run over anyone’s toes. Stiles just launches himself forward and throws himself at the closest person, which happens to be Isaac. He grabs Isaac and hugs tight, letting Isaac cling a little because Isaac’s always been one of the most insecure members of the pack, for reasons that are obvious. The others don’t crowd him, but set about greeting Derek and those who stayed behind (or came back early). When Stiles judges that it’s safe to let go of Isaac without the younger teen feeling rejected, he does so, and grabs Lydia, picking her up around the waist and swinging her around. Then Boyd picks him up from behind and swings him around. Stiles laughs, his feet kicking for purchase. He lands shakily, stumbles forward, and Danny grabs him before he can fall.
Then there’s a group hug with a lot of back-slapping, glomping, and general puppy-piling. They’re all excited to see each other, and they all have plenty of questions for each other about the things that happened while they were gone. Lydia is talking nonstop about colleges despite the fact that everyone else would rather hear about Stiles’ side of things, and several people keep asking why Scott’s limbs are still intact and Stiles can only answer that he presumes it’s because Allison finds certain of his limbs important. He doesn’t indicate which ones.
It’s Danny, who for some reason has the most sensitive nose out of all of them, who first looks up and says, “Hey, we have guests?”
“Yeah, a couple of Allison’s cousins,” Stiles says, and now he finally pulls away long enough for them to get a good look at them. “Or second cousins, I think? Actually it doesn’t matter, the word ‘cousin’ can be used to denote a blood relation of any – ”
“Oh my God, Stiles,” Lydia says. “You said you got ‘a little roughed up’. That is not a little roughed up!”
Stiles gives a chagrined smile and a little shrug, which clearly isn’t going to get him anywhere, what with the fact that one side of his face is still dark with bruises, he’s got a ring of dark blue-purple around his neck, and the fact that it’s too hot for long sleeves means his bandaged forearms are clearly visible. “Yyyyyyeah,” he says, “I may have understated that a little so I could try to explain before you guys flipped out.”
The guests having been completely forgotten, everyone is now demanding explanations, and Stiles holds up his hands to try to stave them off. “It’s a really long story,” he says, “so let’s at least go inside and get some food and then I’ll tell you guys what happened, okay? But first let me introduce you. Mr. Muscles over there is Sam, and the smaller one is Jake.”
He can’t keep the note of possessiveness out of his voice when he points to Jake. All of the others blink, then Isaac says, “Wait, is this an official pack dinner?”
“What? No,” Stiles says, while the two Argents – and Danny, who as of yet hasn’t been there for any official pack inductions – blink at him in confusion. Since it’s obvious that this isn’t going to cut it, Stiles says, “Okay, maybe a little? The long and the very short of it is that Jake’s parents were total dickheads and he wasn’t really cut out to be their kind of hunter, so I swept in like a white knight and rescued him.”
Jake turns red but mutters, “Uh, hi.”
“He used the tiger pit but it was their own fault,” Allison says.
“Okay, wait, no,” Boyd says, shaking his head. “Something about this has to be a lie, because from the way you’re telling it, it sounds like someone actually fell into that stupid tiger pit – ”
Stiles strikes a victory pose.
“And we all know that would never happen.”
“We have a tiger pit?” Danny asks.
Stiles deflates. “Dude, do you actually listen to half the shit that comes out of my mouth?”
“Yeah,” Danny says, “and I ignore the other half because it tends to be stuff like ‘hey, you know what would be awesome? A tiger pit.’”
Stiles makes a face at them. “Anyway, take it easy on this kid. I won’t say ‘behave normally’ because none of us would know how to do that, but try not to scare the crap out of him.” He shakes his head a little as several of the pack members giggle. “Okay, Jake, I’m doing embarrassing you now. So, uh, Jake, Sam, meet the rest of my pack. Isaac’s the tall scarecrow-looking guy, Lydia’s the pretty one, Danny is the other pretty one, and Boyd is the, uh, the . . .”
“Big black dude,” Boyd says, when he sees that Stiles is trying to figure out how to describe him without sounding racist.
Jake laughs a little at Boyd’s self-description. Derek just cracks one of his half-smiles and says, “I think I just heard you slip another half point on the Kinsey Scale, Stiles.”
Danny waggles his eyebrows in a way that was so blatantly suggestive that it’s obviously a joke. “I see my powers of persuasion are working.”
“Trust me, Danny, nobody here is worried about your powers of persuasion,” Lydia says, smiling sweetly up at him. He laughs in response, and Stiles manages to shoo everyone into the house, where they set upon the food. He’s finally able to eat something besides applesauce, and digs in. He notices most of his pack staring at him. They’re trying to be subtle about it, but some of them just don’t have subtlety in their vocabulary.
“Okay, boys and girls,” he says, “the reason I didn’t call you guys to come back was because I was trying to keep you safe. Yes, things got a little out of hand. I won’t argue about that, but . . . it was definitely better, safer, for you guys to be out of town.”
The pack gives him that skeptical look.
“. . . I love you?” Stiles tries.
“That’s special, sweetie,” Lydia says. “Remember that we love you, too, and that we don’t enjoy coming home and finding out you were nearly killed.”
“Okay, do you guys have any interest in being fair at all?” Stiles asks. “Or when I say that the ‘kidnapped and nearly killed thing’ really came out of left field, are y’all just going to shake your heads and look disappointed in me.”
Lydia turns and looks at the rest of the pack, and then folds her arms over her chest. “We’ll hear you out.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, babe,” Stiles says.
Scott shakes his head. “You do realize that once they’ve heard the whole story, they’re only going to be more pissed that you didn’t call them, right?”
Stiles sighs. “Okay, okay. Here’s the story . . .”
~ ~ ~ ~
~fin~