Chapter Text
It’s been a week.
A whole week since Malia dropped down into the seat next to him and just kind of demanded a place for herself in his life. It was a damned hostile takeover. And Stiles didn’t realize what he’d gotten himself into until it was too late to back out.
He hadn’t even flinched when Malia took the seat next to him by the third day. By the fifth, he was saving it for her. A girl had approached Stiles — Stacy, if he remembered correctly — and asked if the chair was taken (they’d had to switch lecture halls to a smaller one with fewer seats). He barely even looked up from his notebook when he said, “Yes, sorry,” completely on autopilot. He spent the next two minutes reflecting on the meaning of it until Malia arrived and took the chair herself.
“What’s wrong?” she’d said, frowning and shooting a look over the room.
“Nothing,” he’d said back, still a bit surprised at himself. Then he’d smiled and said “Good morning.”
“…Morning,” Malia replied, in her usual morning grump mood.
Lunch nowadays is either spent with Scott and Kira, or Cora and Malia. So far their schedules have not coincided. It’s strange. It’s like there’s this sudden duality to Stiles’ life that he doesn’t quite know how to operate. And he’s starting to get the idea that Cora and Malia aren’t going anywhere. He’s surprisingly ok with it. Alright, maybe more than ok. Somehow, despite his pitiful efforts, he’s managed to make some friends. He thinks. This is what friends do, right? Save each other seats and eat lunch together.
He has a free period on Friday and decides to spend it in the library. Cora and Malia find him ten minutes into pulling out his laptop and scrolling through the latest memes on Tumblr. He’s going to study, he swears. He just got a little sidetracked for a bit.
“This is what you call studying?” Cora snorts, taking the chair next to his.
“This is what I call a study warm-up,” Stiles corrects, minimizing the tab and bringing up his notes. Malia takes the seat on the other side of Cora.
“Right,” Cora says, and it should be illegal to use that much sarcasm in a sentence. Unless Stiles is the one using it, that is. She leans over to take another peek at his computer screen. “What is that anyway? CSI: Campus Horror Story?”
“Forensic Science,” Stiles says, shaking his head in amusement. “What’s your major anyway? I haven’t asked,” he realizes. Cora gives him Arts vibes, he thinks. It’s something about that whole badass femme fatale aura she’s got going on for her.
“Computer science.”
“You’re a geek?”
Cora raises one very threatening unimpressed eyebrow.
“No judgment here,” Stiles says, raising his hands in surrender. “You actually remind me of someone.”
“Pray tell.”
“Oh. Uh… Lydia, she goes to MIT.” He shrugs, thinking he ought to text her tonight. They haven’t spoken in a while. “She’s this Math genius, but you could get her to recite the last twenty issues of Vogue magazine back to cover if you wanted to. Also, I’m pretty sure she can slit a man’s throat with a credit card.”
“She sounds interesting,” Cora says, curiosity plain on her face.
“Interesting’s a word you could use, I guess. I for one like to go with terrifying.”
Cora snorts and digs her notebook out of her bag.
They spend the remainder of Stiles’ free period in the library. At some point during that, Stiles finds himself being coerced into handing his phone over. Cora and Malia were both complaining that it took forever to find him in the library. They take turns saving their numbers and messaging themselves from his phone to get his. In an unprecedented act of defiance, Stiles changes their contact names to ‘MurderChild no1’ and ‘MurderChild no2’ when he gets it back. He thinks it’s pretty accurate from the death glares he gets.
It’s all Scott’s fault. Stiles is damned sure of it. Because werewolves are profoundly annoying creatures with inner furnaces for bowels. That’s the only explanation Stiles finds for why Scott could ever claim it to be too hot in their dorm room and open a window. It was less than forty degrees out!
And now Stiles’ got a cold.
Again, he blames Scott. All the way. What makes it worse is that the little bastard can’t even get sick. No matter how much Stiles tries sneezing on him. The least he deserves is a taste of his own medicine. This is completely unfair.
He wakes up that morning with a pounding headache and muscle pains all over, and wants to cry himself back to sleep.
“You ok, dude?” Scott asks, squinting at him from his bed.
Stiles grunts something that sounds vaguely murderous and squashes his extra pillow against his face. He wants to strangle Scott. Unfortunately, he’s all the way over in his bed and the gap between them might as well be the Mariana trench right now for all that Stiles feels capable of going over there. He settles for suffocating his pillow to death. There are feathers involved.
When he finally drags himself out of bed, he goes straight for the medicine cabinet and pops an aspirin with a swig of water. He takes his Adderal after, feeling like death warmed over.
“We are never opening that window again,” Stiles growls, jabbing his finger at it.
Scott shrinks in on himself like a chastised puppy. Good.
Breakfast is a quiet affair, mostly because Stiles glares Scott into silence whenever he tries to open his mouth. Usually to apologize again. Noise is not beneficial to the headache-afflicted, however. The damned aspirin has barely kicked in yet. He glowers at his scrambled eggs with bacon and stabs his fork into them.
He debates skipping classes that day and emailing his professors, but he really doesn’t want to fall behind and they’re barely into the semester. The last thing he needs is to get a truant reputation this early on. Plus, they’re getting their assignments for the Sociology paired-group project today. Stiles figures he should at least attend the class for that and then head home after lunch if he’s not feeling any better. He makes sure to pack plenty of tissues and nasal spray before heading out.
Stiles’ walk to class that day goes by in a sort of haze. He focuses on putting one foot in front of the other and tries to tune everything else out. It’s a bright day with barely a cloud in the sky though, and the sun is shining in his eyes, making his headache all that much worse. Just his luck.
He makes it to class ten minutes early and collapses into a chair two rows from the back. The lighting is darker here, with the three burned-out light bulbs no one has bothered to replace for weeks. His head is still throbbing and he hopes the darkness will, at the very least, not aggravate his situation.
He’s pretty sure he should have been feeling the effects of the aspirin by now. Maybe it was expired? He’s not sure how long he’s had it. It was part of his stash from back home. He thinks he recalls a box with an expiry date of January (last year).
“Why do you look miserable?” Malia asks when she drops into the seat next to him.
“Hello to you too,” Stiles grumbles, rubbing his temples.
She raises her eyebrows at him.
“I have a cold,” he whines, sniffling. “And my head hurts.”
“Why’d you come in then?”
“Because of the group project assignments,” Stiles sighs, gesturing miserably at where the professor is writing the project themes on the whiteboard.
“You could have just texted me.”
“What?” Stiles looks over, frowning.
“You could have texted me,” Malia repeats, enunciating each word separately. Honestly, he has a headache, not a hearing impediment. “I would have chosen for us.”
“For… us? You mean the theme of… our group project?” Stiles asks. It’s not that he hadn’t expected Malia to volunteer to work with him, but to have it stated so implicitly? The consideration makes a warm feeling settle in the deep of his stomach.
“…Yes,” Malia says, giving him an exasperated look, complete with a glance heavenward, a huff, and a purse of her lips.
“Oh.”
She rolls her eyes at him. Stiles turns back to his stuff and starts setting up his workspace, pondering. He hadn’t really expected to make friends this fast in university, certainly not the sister of one Derek Hale. Stiles still catches himself having daymares about the guy. That scowling face, menacing eyebrows, and rumbling growl did a real number on him.
…It was totally not about the guy’s perfect set of abs, or that expertly groomed stubble, or even the piercing green eyes. Of course not. Why is that even a suggestion?
He jumps when he feels a hand brushing his nape out of the blue. It’s not cold or anything, but he’s not really expecting people to brush their hands over the back of his neck at random. It’s a bit… invasive.
“Hold still, you’ve got something in your collar,” Malia says, to his left.
Stiles freezes. Dread locking his muscles.
“Is it a spider? Oh my god— is it—”
“It’s not a spider! Hold still.”
He squeezes an eye shut, keeping as still as the dead while she ruffles his collar. An eternity seems to pass.
“Is it out?”
Stiles hears the roll of her eyes this time.
“Yes.”
Stiles sags, letting all the tension out of his body. He damn near had a heart attack. Damn critters. Spiders are fine — as long as they’re not on him. He can even get close and pick them up with a piece of paper to set them back outside, but as soon as they get their little stick legs on him, it’s an all-out war.
He blinks and looks at the board. Surprisingly, he no longer needs to squint through the light to read it. Huh. The aspirin seems to be kicking in. A bit late, but beggars can’t be choosers. As long as his head’s not throbbing anymore, he’ll take it.
The morning is slow to pass.
Malia keeps bumping his hand on the table while they’re writing, which he finds a little bit odd because it doesn’t tend to happen. Stiles is known to flail and fidget at regular minute-spaced intervals, but Malia seems to have a preternatural ability to evade his hyperactive limbs. No today, though. Maybe she’s a little off too.
He shakes his head and puts it out of his mind. It seems pretty insignificant a detail to dwell on.
They end up with ‘Family Dynamics and Structure’ as a theme, which was not their first or second option. Stiles is feeling pretty petty about that. There’s nothing to do now other than accept it, though. Thus the dice have fallen.
Stiles makes his notes and tries his best to concentrate on what the professor is saying. It’s not quite that easy today. He finds himself drifting more often than not, random things on his mind. Plus, people keep shooting annoyed looks at him whenever he blows his nose. Which is often.
When the class ends, he says goodbye to Malia and heads over to the Western lecture hall for Criminal Law. He hopes it goes slightly better.
It does not.
By lunch hour, Stiles’ headache has returned with a vengeance.
He staggers over to his table in the outer courtyard and drops down into his seat, placing his head in his hands. He thinks both Malia and Cora share his lunch schedule today, but neither has arrived yet.
Stiles closes his eyes for a bit, breathing in.
This is the spot Malia had dragged him over to a week ago. He’s since claimed it as his own. He eats all his lunches here, even when he’s with Scott and Kira. It’s almost up against the eastern wall of the university so it’s guarded from the wind, plus he gets a river view and quasi-isolation — it’s far from the other tables. The only thing that would make it better is for the weather to be a little warmer.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Stiles squints up at Cora through the cracks in his fingers, scrunching up his face. Malia hasn’t shown up yet.
“Headache,” he complains.
She hums and sits next to him, heaving her backpack onto the table. He hears the sound of it unzipping as Cora retrieves her food. Stiles needs to get his lunch out too, though he doesn’t feel particularly hungry right now. There’s a Tupperware of leftover cold pasta salad and a bruised banana waiting for him in his backpack though, and he feels like the smell is going to permeate it permanently if he doesn’t dispose of them.
He startles when he feels fingers prying his hands away from his face, and a palm going over his forehead.
“What are you doing?” he asks, taken aback.
“Checking your temperature.”
Stiles blinks at her, incredulous. He has never felt so… mothered. How is this even a thing that is happening to him? With Cora of all people? He frowns and reaches up to peel her hand off.
“I’m fine, Mom. Thanks,” he huffs, shaking his head. The weird thing though, is that he does feel better. What is that about?
Cora shrugs and reaches out to unwrap her burrito.
Malia arrives about ten minutes later and sits across from him. They eat in companionable silence and, once again, Stiles finds himself brushing hands with Cora often enough to be noticeable. He’s never known either of them to be very touchy, so this seems like a strange development. And both at the same time?
He feels like there’s something he’s missing here. And it’s not just his paranoia telling him that. He’s fairly sure. Like seventy-five percent. Alright, maybe sixty.
At least his headache abates enough that he decides against going home early. He’ll stick around for his last class of the day and hope the pounding in his head has gone away for good.
He’s dead on his feet when he finally makes it to the dorm that evening. His headache has worsened again, but thankfully it hasn’t reached the levels it was at before. Small mercies.
Scott’s already in their room when Stiles walks through the door, texting and lying on his bed. Stiles frowns as soon he steps foot inside. The space is warmer than when he left this morning. Warmer than usual, even.
“Did you heat the room?” Stiles asks, peering at his best friend.
“Maybe?” Scott says, putting his phone down and scratching the back of his head.
“Hm,” Stiles hums, walking over to sit on his own bed. The only ones Stiles is aware have a heater in working condition are the two lacrosse jocks over on the third floor. He supposes Scott has gotten enough credit to receive borrowing privileges. Good. Stiles will abuse those privileges.
“Are you feeling better?”
“Moderately.”
“Here, let me. I’ll take a bit of the pain,” Scott says, leaning forward and reaching out to wrap a hand around Stiles’ wrist.
Stiles stills, an epiphanic sledgehammer of a realization stirring in his gut. He watches the black veiny lines crawl up Scott’s arm, feels the concomitant relief of the ache, and thinks back to all the times Cora and Malia had reached out to touch him today. Accident… or intent? Those fluctuations in the severity of his malaise could have been coincidence, or cause and effect.
He already suspected Derek Hale (no, he hasn’t let it go). And now this? His sister and her best friend? What did his father always say? One's an incident, two's a coincidence, and three's a pattern. Stiles has got a pattern on his hands. This is no longer one of his wild theories.
“Scott,” Stiles says, prompting him to look up and meet his eyes. “I think I know who those weres were you sensed at the party.”
Scott tilts his head in a questioning manner, just like a puppy.
“Derek, Cora, and Malia.”
“Your friends?” Scott asks, frowning at him. He sounds confused.
“Well. Cora and Malia, yes,” Stiles says. He doesn’t think there has ever been a universe out there where he and Derek Hale are on ‘friend’ terms. Pigs are more likely to grow wings and fly. “I think they did this today too,” he gestures at Scott’s hand where it rests on Stiles’ wrist, leeching away his pain. “I didn’t notice it at the time, but, it was weird. They were touchy. They’re never touchy. And my headache got conspicuously worse every time I was away from them. Every. Time. Scott.”
“Ok, ok. I believe you,” Scott says, pulling away from Stiles and raising both his hands in a placating gesture. “So, what do you want to do about it?”
“Can you… I don’t know. Sniff them out? Make sure?”
Scott scrunches his nose, a pensive look on his face.
“I guess… I’d have to be close, though.”
“How close?” Stiles asks, chewing on a hangnail.
“Pretty close.”
“Can you keep your scent masked at that distance?”
“Maybe? Satomi said I was good at it, but there are limits to it. It wouldn’t work on an alpha,” Scott says, looking a bit uncertain. Satomi hadn’t just said he was good, though. Stiles remembers her being distinctively impressed by Scott’s ease at it, considering he was such a young bitten wolf. It must have weighed heavily on her decision to invite him into her pack as soon as she did.
It still frustrates Stiles to no end that Scott had refused. It’s a regular point of contention between them. Stiles always tells Scott that he should accept, that Satomi would still take him if he went back. He’d be safer with an actual pack at his back like Laura always said. Scott argues that his place is with his friends and his family. He already has a pack, and he isn’t interested in trading it. Stiles hates how he makes sense sometimes.
“I can try, though,” Scott continues, a wrinkle between his brows. “When are you having lunch with them next?”
“Thursday.”
“Alright. We’ll find out on Thursday.”