bleeding out

Scott stares at the phone for what’s easily a collective five minutes. He has absolutely no idea what to say, considering every possible thing he’d said yesterday turned out to be the exact wrong thing. 

Eventually, he decides he’s being ridiculous. 

[text] yeah, no absolutely.

they got these kids in the bunker 

“…Seriously? I leave you guys alone for twenty minutes, and you already hate each other?”

That’s…not so much a surprise, as it’s not at all a helpful idea of whatever happened since he left Scott at the bunker. He should’ve sent Scott out to get dinner. Hindsight and all that.

“What happened? What did you talk about?”

“He seems like a pretty angry dude all around.” Which isn’t really fair to say, but considering the circumstance, well. 

Scott almost doesn’t want to talk about it. He’s worried about where the conversation’s gonna end up, what it could devolve into. But he’d promised that they’d talk about anything and everything, and he isn’t interested in keeping anything from Stiles. 

“We talked about you, mostly. About how you were doing here, with them. About how I wanted to make sure you were protected.” Which sounds pretty bad, but Scott’s not gonna lie to him. “Which I guess turned into Dean saying I made you into a victim.”  

It should not take this long to make a few burr——okay, maybe he ordered a bit much. But that’s because he’s guesstimating for giants. And Scott’s supernatural metabolism makes him eat like five people.

Stiles is busy squinting at the guy nervously fixing guacamole on trays of chips when Scott sidles up to him. 

“I think burritos may have been a terrible idea. I have it on good authority that they’re not on good terms with Sam’s stomach.” Maybe he did it on purpose. “This is totally gonna backfire on us. And I mean, like — literally. Do you think it’s too la—woah, hey, what’s wrong?”

“What happened?”

The litany of words is a comfort, Stiles sounding relatively carefree and normal. Of course, he catches on in no time flat, and Scott lets his head droop a fraction. 

“It’s not a big deal,” he says quickly, because there’s nothing to worry about. Really.

It’s a little under an hour before he catches his scent on the wind, and slows his lazy jog to a walk. It wasn’t near enough to get his blood pumping, and it didn’t bring him any comfort. He feels sick, wrong in all sorts of ways. 

When Scott walks into the taco shack and sees the profile he could pick out of any sized crowd, he goes over silently, lump in his throat. 

“Hey, Scotty, yeah, I–” That’s about all Stiles gets through before Scott’s already dropped the phone. His voice calls up from it, once or twice, but then he just seems to give up, because the line goes dead.

It’s only a few minutes later, really, when Stiles shows up at Scott’s house. He’s carrying a whole bag of things, which he explains to Melissa in a breathless lie as she’s on her way  to work, and then he’s upstairs, coming thundering into Scott’s room without knocking, unafraid. “Hey, hey buddy, I’m here, we’re gonna get through this, okay? How are you feeling?”

Stiles drops the bag on Scott’s bed even as he’s talking, and rummages. Some of the things rattle, sounding like metal on metal. The thing he actually pulls out is a shaker of something that looks like it might be gunpowder. Stiles doesn’t ask permission as he starts to draw a line with that powder around the edge of the room, apparently meaning to line the bedroom and the bathroom in it.

He smells him come in. He smells him. That shouldn’t be happening. 

It’s like the flu, only he feels it from his scalp and to his toes. But what’s worse, is he feels so angry. There’s no cause behind it, but he wants to lash out, damage something breakable. 

You’re a boy, you’re a boy, he says in his head so loud he might be saying it out loud, and the roaring in his blood quiets. 

Quiets enough to hear Stiles. 

Scott says his name, a pathetic noise, and rolls over on the tile to try and squint through the too-bright light to find him. 

We weren’t trained for this. 

Dean seethes, white knuckled and God he wants to hurl the fucking bottle right at the kid’s head. “Everything we know, everything we do, it’s through trial and error. My old man’s blood and sweat made sure we had any of the knowledge we had. And it was nothing. You think salt and silver prepared us for fucking angels?”

One last vicious swallow and the bottle is empty. Dean uses chunking it in the trash as a means to pull in a breath, to shove it all down again. He’s not playing pity olympics with some kid. 

“I get it. Trust me, I get it. When you gotta let someone you love bail on you, because they’re pissed or need space or God knows what? I get that. But-”

There is serious weight behind that ‘but’ and there’s the accusing finger Dean has been trying to keep down. 

“When I met Stiles? He barely knew how to throw a punch. Didn’t know how to disarm anyone. He’s been a victim, and that’s on you. He’s your responsibility. You know how to fight, you know how to survive. You should have been showing him how, all along.”

He doesn’t hate Scott. Honestly, he doesn’t care one way or the other. But there’s a tie that binds here, so they need to have it out and move on. If Scott can’t get that…then maybe he’s in the wrong line of work. 

“So how about you stow the poor, pitiful me crap and start pulling your weight. Because from what I’ve heard? He does all the heavy lifting, and all you do is ignore him when he tells you he’s got a hunch.”

It’s then that Scott starts to really get it. 

Through the simmering anger building higher and higher in his chest - because this is probably one of the most frustrating conversations he’s had in years - it stings the way seeing Derek used to. A guy beaten down within an inch of his spirit, drawing strength from whatever he could find - anger and pain being the primary options. 

If he were as skilled at Stiles is with arming words and using them to their full potential, Scott would say something about the fact that they’re still adults, and when they were seventeen or eighteen they were still learning from their dad. (Stiles has told him some of their history, after all.) 

But then it starts hitting close to home again, about not teaching Stiles ways to defend himself. Because Scott isn’t ever able to see him and Stiles as separate enough entities that he couldn’t do the fighting for him. Teaching a man to fish versus catching the fish for him is Dean’s point, and it’s fair. But the enemies that Stiles has had to fight in the past weren’t physical ones (see: Nogitsune). 

It’s an excuse. 

To someone he knows, to someone in his pack, he’d concede the point. This man doesn’t know him. He knows Stiles, but not the way Scott does. And Scott isn’t inclined to really listen to a guy who’s perfectly happy to throw every once of Scott’s failings back in his face without any preamble. 

(What did Stiles tell him? The hurt of that will go away, he thinks. Scott will have to ask him.)

“I don’t have to defend myself to you.” That’s spending too much time around Malia. 

Start pulling your weight. That’s on you. It’s words he’s told himself time and again, and it’s words he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop saying. 

But Dean doesn’t know him. 

“You say I should shut up and accept your help, but you don’t seem to really want to give it. Which is fine, we’ve done things on our own before. Help Stiles. Teach him how to fight, how to survive. You seem to be good at that.” 

There’s no fight in him for moments like these. Not when there’s no point. “I’m gonna go get some food.” It’s a pretty obvious retreat, but Dean already thinks so poorly of him, this won’t make a difference. 

“You want to be sure that he’s safe? How about you just ask him?”

His fingers tighten against the neck of the bottle, and Dean tosses another long swallow back. It doesn’t do anything for the tightness in his throat. He’s sure Stiles is going to chew his ass out for this, but he’s not backing down. 

This is important. 

“Look, I’m not exactly the friggin poster child for healthy relationships. I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life. But how about instead of being all alpha at me for looking after the guy, you appreciate that he’s got more family than he started out with?”

He gestures with his beer, because his grip keeps him from pointing an accusing finger. 

“I know what it’s like to get thrown off the deep end. And regardless of what you think I’m doing around here, I’m helping him. I could help you too, if you pulled your head out of your ass and accepted a little information from someone outside of your pack.”

It’s pretty hard for Scott to not take this personally. 

This guy doesn’t know him, but he’s talking like he knows Scott’s life story, like he’s got all his failings figured out. (And no, he doesn’t miss the throwaway alpha and pack like they’re a new profanity to be flung like a weapon.) 

Then again, he sounds like this is a lot of pent up frustration over something completely unrelated. Not fully, because Scott hears him, and understands what he’s saying, but at the same time, he doesn’t think Dean’s understanding his point at all. 

“It’s not that I don’t trust you to take care of him,” Scott says, because that needs to be cleared up. “You clearly know what you’re doing. But what we’ve dealt with is on a different level; we weren’t trained for this. And I’m glad that he’s found someone who is. I am."

Because the think is, he is. His worry stems from the lack of control. And not that he’s ever wanted to control any aspect of Stiles, he still finds himself trying to sniff him out when he knows he’s over a hundred miles away, because he needs that affirmation. 

He’s starting to really feel like crap. 

It’s not really the fact that Stiles has been lying to him about key parts of his life for basically years. He’ll have time to dwell on that when it doesn’t feel like his blood is about to burn it’s way through his skin. 

Plus, those key parts are probably about to come in handy.

“He helps when it doesn’t get in the way of school.”

Yeah, the last thing he needs is to catch grief from a kid who thinks he’s doing wrong by Stiles. Dean’s got his own ideas about doing wrong by him, and he could ask Scott all about how you take someone that bright and make them so broke down that they’re surprised when you believe them, no questions asked. 

“This isn’t amateur hour, man. I’m not throwing him out there to the wolves.” It’s a bad pun, but it fits the bill. 

Dean puts the beer down and stands. Letting Scott come in here was a kindness. He doesn’t owe him the window dressing. 

“Whatever you’re here for, go ahead and say it. I don’t need the bullshit olive branch.”

The change of mood is sudden and unexpected. The air goes sour in the space of a breath, and Scott clenches his jaw. 

The implications are a slap in the face. Because they’re all just kids. They didn’t have a family business, they’d been thrown into all of this and expected not to drown. And they didn’t. They stood up against the odds and fought, and won. And no one had fought harder than Stiles, had beat the odds so fantastically. They’ve survived. 

Most of them. 

          Most of them start normal, that deception where you’re unsure if you’re dreaming at all,           or you woke up and just can’t remember. Strangers doing strange things, like holding the           door open for you then offering you a writhing snake with scales that shine silver, or           telling you you’re going to be late for class, touching your shoulder with bruising grip then           shoving a trident through your chest.

Upon waking, he finds he’s not weirded out by the quirks that jar him from reality. It’s their eyes. Warm whiskey, shining no matter the light, every stranger has the same eyes. They’re pleading even as they point him in the direction of rusted train tracks, as they shove him into a storm drain, as they push him to touch a green pool that’s so still it looks like glass.

Hours had passed while Lydia kept vigil, the gentle morning light turning harsh as it cut through the water. The fish that brushed past her, still as a permanent fixture in the water, made her acutely aware of the hunger growing in her belly, but she would eat when she had returned home, either with answers or new blood on her blade. 

The sun peaked and began its slow descent toward the line where the sky met the water, and the flow of the water shifted as something large moved nearby. Too large to be a single fish, too solid to be many. She was not well-hidden from that angle, and the afternoon sun filtering through the waves gave her hair the distinct color of blood in the water. If she hadn’t been spotted, she soon would be. It took only a few beats of her tail to reach him, and she wrapped the sharp hook of her blade around his throat, ready to rip through flesh, her free arm circling his waist.

“Stay very still, invader, and you may live long enough to face justice.” 

It’s not a complete ambush. 

The water’s a giveaway for movement, and he feels the change right before she grabs him. Still, though the water gave her away, she’d been too quick for him to do anything with the second of knowledge. The blade crooks over his throat, and he smacks out with his flukes, scraping against hard scales, her own bladed fins cutting into his abdomen - 

Her?

The red hair does it. Eyebrows sky high, Scott tries to turn his head as she speaks, an angry snarl.