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Jackson is gone. Jackson is gone and Danny is stuck in high school with a bunch of people who think his sexuality defines him, who don’t know about his life, or his family, or his grades. They know him as the easygoing gay goalie, like that’s all there is to him.
Jackson is gone and he now lives in a small town in which nobody knows him. Nobody knows the struggle it was to move from Hawaii to California during middle school while he was also having a huge gay crisis, the way he acted out by hacking important people, the year of therapy he went through until he was ready to come out to his parents, who surprised him by being the most supportive parents in the planet, or how much he forces himself to try to make them proud now, as an apology for what he made them go through.
Jackson is gone and he doesn’t explain what happened to him, just asks Danny to understand that he needed to leave and to not try and found out happened and Danny doesn’t. He doesn’t intend to look into anything because he respects his best friend. It’s not his fault that the things start to look into him.
-
Danny doesn’t really understand what’s happening at first. There are people who aren’t really people whose eyes are shining in a way that is definitely not human and they are hunting each other and hurting each other and he doesn’t know who’s bad and who is good, if there’s anyone good at all, and he doesn’t know who is who because he’s in so much pain.
Lydia is next to him trying to calm him down, telling him not to move, that it’ll all be over soon and he wants to laugh because there’s no way in hell he can move his leg and he hopes that she means he’ll die because dying has to be better than to feel this kind of pain. Then he’s angry because he knows his parents are going to be so fucking wrecked if he dies and he has to stay alive, he has to stay awake. He closes his eyes.
When Danny wakes up, Stiles is sleeping in a chair next to his hospital bed. He groans and then regrets immediately because it makes Stiles wake up and look at him, guilt and sympathy clear on his face.
“Scott wanted to be here.” Stiles tells him. “But he’s kind of busy right now and Lydia’s mother got her in house arrest. So that leaves you with me and, dude, seriously, I’m sorry to bother you, but I kind of need to know what you remember from last night.”
“Go away, Stiles.” Danny thinks that’s answer enough. He has no fucking clue what happened, but he knows he didn’t sign up for this shit. “Are my parents here?”
“They went home to take a shower. I haven’t been here long, actually. I was sleeping because I had kind of been up for thirty-six hours. But, seriously, Danny, I really need to know what you remember from last night.” Stiles says, almost begging.
“Look, first rule of fight club. I have no idea what I remember. I’m not going to talk about it.” Stiles nods and gets up from his chair. Danny thinks about letting him leave, but then he has to ask. “Does what happened have anything to do to why Jackson left?” Stiles looks at him for a while, probably deciding if he should lie, but he nods and heads to the door of the hospital bedroom. “He’s my best friend.” Danny says, just before Stiles puts his hand on the doorknob. It makes Stiles turn around.
“Do you want to know what happened?” And Danny isn’t sure if he’s going to regret this, but he remembers the tone of Jackson’s voice when he told Danny not to look into it and he shakes his head. Stiles leaves.
-
Stiles is probably the most annoying person Danny has ever met. Stiles is obnoxious, and he’s an asshole, and he jokes about things that shouldn’t be joked about. Stiles mostly doesn’t care at all if anything he says is going to hurt people he doesn’t care about and he maybe cares about five people in his life, tops. And Danny also thought Stiles knew him only as the openly gay guy in his class until Stiles told him about knowing of his past in hacking.
Stiles is also the kid who Danny has seen getting in front of Scott when they were fourteen and some kid from the baseball team was going to punch him, the person who went to school every day, even though his mother was in the hospital, just because he didn’t want Scott to be alone if he had an asthma attack, the person who refused to be seen as the kid who had lost his mother and acted enough like an asshole that people stopped pitying him.
Danny doesn’t think about Stiles all that much. They share some classes and they are lab partners because Jackson was with Lydia and Danny cared about his grades enough to choose the only person in the class who had any chance to keep up with him. They didn’t have all that much in common besides lacrosse and Stiles wasn’t even a good player before the miracle in the last game of sophomore year.
It’s just… Stiles was the first person to ask him if he wanted to be let in of what is happening, like Danny matters. And maybe Stiles is grateful that Danny didn’t want to know, but now Danny does. He does because Jackson left, Scott and Isaac have been skipping school like their attendance is optional, Lydia doesn’t even pretend not to be smart anymore, correcting their teachers’ mistakes like they offend her and Stiles… Danny hasn’t even seen Stiles trying to crack up a joke in a week.
He tells himself it’s not worry that makes him pick up his phone from his bedside table and write a text. He doesn’t even know those people. He kind of knows Lydia through Jackson, but that’s it. He tells himself that he’s allowed to be curious and just presses send. I want to know what’s happening. He gets a reply not even five minutes later. Show up at Scott’s house tomorrow at nine.
-
People almost bash Stiles. There is a lot of yelling. Danny doesn’t really pay attention to much because werewolves. Stiles smirks at him and tells him he must not be all that smart because when his best friend had been turned into a werewolf he found out in five minutes. Danny doesn’t feel bad for not being ridiculously crazy enough to think of werewolves as the first (or any at all) answer to anything. He thinks he’s going to pass out after the third time he makes Scott shift for him.
-
He’s running. He’s in the woods, he’s trying to get to the Hale house before the Alpha werewolf that’s currently running after him unavoidably catches up and he is cursing himself for not listening to Jackson and forgetting about everything. He’s also cursing Stiles for telling him about fucking werewolves even though nobody wanted him to do it.
“I don’t really care what they want.” Stiles had told him. “They are all super powered werewolves, or genius strawberry blondes, or real life versions of Katniss Everdeen, so if I want someone to share mediocrity with me, I’ll have it.” Danny had punched him in the shoulder. He now feels like he should have beaten the shit out of him.
Out of nowhere Isaac appears by his side and tells him to keep running. He can hear the fight breaking out behind him, but he can’t look back, he can’t stop running. He’s scared like he was when cops showed up at his house to arrest him even though he was just thirteen years old. He keeps running until he crashes into Stiles.
Stiles steps back to take a look at him, probably to see if he’s injured, then he just steps forward again and hugs Danny like it is something normal, like they do it all the time. And Danny is still running on adrenaline so he just hugs Stiles back and laughs and laughs until Stiles is laughing with him.
“I can’t believe this is your fucking life, Stilinski.”
-
Danny doesn’t really mean to care about those people. He doesn’t mean to get involved at all. He just wants to know the truth and go home, maybe call Jackson so they can have a conversation without the weight of secrets between them. Once he knows, though, he can’t unknow and when Scott, Stiles, Lydia, or even Isaac ask him for favors and he knows that not doing it can cost somebody’s life, he has to do it. And suddenly he is one of them.
He gets to know Lydia not as his best friend’s girlfriend and the most popular girl at school, but as the smartest woman he’d ever meet and as someone who feels like she has to show everyone that she’s strong, even though he can see that she still suffers from her parents’ divorce, what went through with Jackson and Derek’s insane uncle using her like a puppet after almost killing her.
He doesn’t think Derek lets anyone truly get to know him, but there’s Boyd who is quiet, but also so, so angry about losing someone he’d gotten to know and had fallen in love with, after he was turned. Boyd is huge and he isn’t afraid of anything, like the only reason he carries on at all is the fact that Erica would have wanted him to keep living.
There’s also Isaac. Someone who is so scared, but just doesn’t want to run away from things, someone who understands that with great power comes great responsibility and wants to use it to help people, someone who struggles between trying to look out for himself and trying to look out for everyone else. And Isaac looks up to Scott so much it’s adorable.
He gets to really see Scott, too, who is the most obnoxiously perfect human being he’s ever met. Danny wishes he could say that Scott is self-righteous, but Scott just really wants everyone to be all right and he is so done with all of the werewolf shit he’s had to take care of. And it’s so funny the way that Derek and Scott interact, like they’re brothers that can’t stand to be in the same room and that think they are the one who knows the better way to get stuff done.
And, of course, there’s Stiles who’s just Stiles. Stiles who pretends he doesn’t feel guilty for everything, and pretends he isn’t scared, and pretends he’s having fun, and just pretends so much Danny doesn’t know if Stiles actually believes the lies he uses as a front. Stiles who is different from everyone in the way he’s not ashamed to put people he cares about in front of everyone else, the way he’s not afraid to admit that he’d sacrifice anyone at all just to keep the people he loves alive. Stiles who shows up at Danny’s house when things are calm with his laptop and some candy and asks Danny to teach him “hacker stuff”. Stiles who Danny tells himself he’s not falling in love with. Maybe he too can start repeating lies until he believes them.
-
Stiles shows up at his house once and says he doesn’t really want to get in, when Danny invites him. He sits on the steps of the porch on the house Danny has lived in for four years and gestures for Danny to sit next to him. They don’t say anything for a long time and Danny wants to break the silence so bad, but he just waits.
“I just… I wanted to apologize for putting you in the middle of this. I’m really sorry because now I fucking care about you and I feel awful for saying stuff just because I wanted to get back at Jackson for breaking Lydia’s heart by leaving.” And it’s so weird hearing something truthful out of Stiles that Danny just doesn’t say anything, just watches Stiles leave.
By that point, they’d already traded comic books, had Pixar marathons, and argued about DC versus Marvel both in movies and in comics. They’d already spent nights together making mountain ash circles around each other’s houses and met each other’s families and could say that they were close friends. By that point, Danny was already completely and irreversibly in love and he felt too pathetic to admit to Stiles that there wasn’t much he could do that wouldn’t be forgiven.
-
Stiles avoids him for a couple of weeks, but it’s impossible to keep up with it when they’re in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere with four members of the Alpha pack fighting four werewolves that clearly don’t know what they’re doing and two humans who are just along for the ride.
Scott tells Stiles to leave, run away, and Danny thinks it’s a great idea. Danny is sure it’s the best idea Scott has ever had in his life, but Stiles apparently doesn’t agree with him because he doesn’t move, just looks around to access the situation.
Derek is fighting the big Alpha who’s definitely their leader, Boyd and Isaac are each taking on one of the twins and Scott is trying to hold his own against the only woman of the pack, who also seems like the scariest werewolf in the history of werewolves, but he doesn’t seem to be doing so well. Stiles clearly notices it too because he nods to himself and crouches to take a fucking dagger out of God-knows-where on his right ankle and goes to help Scott.
Stiles manages to stab the woman in the back, but she turns around and claws his face before dropping to the ground, screaming in pain and clearly not understanding how the hell a human could do that to her. There’s blood all over Stiles face and he seems like he’s struggling to keep himself standing, but he manages to say “yeah, there’s wolfsbane in that, bitch” before passing out.
-
Danny thinks it’s ironic, so he sits on a chair by Stiles’ hospital bed and pretends he’s asleep until Stiles wakes up. Stiles probably thinks it’s ironic too because he laughs as soon he opens his eyes and then follows it with a whine of pain.
Danny sits there and tells Stiles what happened after he passed out, how long he was out, how worried the sheriff is and that Scott wants to kill him for being such an idiot asshole with absolutely no sense of self-preservation whatsoever. Danny talks about everything, except how much it hurt to see Stiles lying on the floor with blood coming out of his face and not knowing if Stiles was going to live or die.
-
There’s a big scar on Stiles’ face that the doctors say can just be fixed with plastic surgery, which Stiles promptly refuses because “this scar is so badass, now I look like a Lion King character and I can change my nickname to Scar”. For everyone else the scar is just a reminder of one of the worst nights of their lives.
They’re lying in Stiles’ bed, watching Wreck-It Ralph when Danny stops trying to be nice just because Stiles was in the hospital for three weeks and tells Stiles that he’s the most selfish asshole he’s ever met and he doesn’t understand why the fuck he cares about him since Stiles definitely doesn’t deserve it and it doesn’t even make sense that he’s this attracted to Stiles because Stiles is not even his type.
They’re lying in Stiles’ bed when Stiles kisses him for the first time, then looks at him with a smile in his face that makes his eyes close a little and the scar look like it’s one continuous line. Stiles is right, the scar is totally badass.
They’re lying in Stiles’ bed when they have their second, third, fourth kiss. Stiles closes his laptop and puts it on the bedside table saying he can’t keep going with a children’s movie playing on the background and they have their first time and they trade “I love you”s and it’s a night of firsts after firsts for them and it’s fucking perfect, more perfect than it’s been with anyone Danny has ever been with.
When they wake up the next morning, Jackson’s still gone, but Danny is not alone anymore. There are people who know him for who he really is and that he knows as more than just faces and stereotypes. And he realizes that things will never be easy because werewolves and hunters and supernatural beings. But right now, Stiles’ hand is on his chest, right above his heart, and he doesn’t really care for anything else.