Chapter Text
He should’ve known there was a reason so many of the popular crowd were hanging around in the corridor after the last bell rang, because normally they’d be out the front door and off in their fancy cars with their girlfriends wreaking havoc somewhere.
After all, it was Friday night, and there was nothing more important to the rich, popular fucks in this stupid town than to go out and cause all kinds of trouble for the poor people of Beacon Hills, California. So for them to be lingering after the final bell meant he should’ve paid more attention.
But alas, he hadn’t, and that was how he ended up with the entire contents of a burrito—meat, sour cream, rice, the whole works—all down his front, followed by explosive laughter from the popular crowd less than five feet away from him.
Stiles Stilinski just stood in front of his open locker, struggling to rein in his temper since the last time he’d reacted to this shit, he’d gotten detention and his dad had been called. Funny how he could be justifiably angry about something and get in trouble for it, yet the rich assholes beside him could do shit like this and the teachers just laughed and insisted, “Boys will be boys!”
Inhaling deeply through his nose, Stiles reached up with one hand to wipe the food from his face, glad nothing got into his eyes because he was pretty sure spicy beef would have hurt. He shook out his dirty hand, hearing a splat on the ground beside him, and just forced himself to breathe.
Don’t react, don’t say anything, just get your books and go, he insisted to himself.
Something that would be hard to achieve, given his locker was a fucking mess. Thankfully most of the explosion had been outward—Stiles had to hand it to them, whoever had rigged the burrito to blow up in his face upon opening his locker was pretty fucking smart—but some of the innards had ended up along the inside of his locker.
Shit, he couldn’t leave his locker like this over the weekend, it would probably start to smell, what with the dairy and the meat. He didn’t want to start the damn year with fucking roaches in his locker, that would make a shitty year even worse.
Thankfully it was his last one. Senior year. He just had to make it to graduation, then he was fucking out of here.
Well, hopefully. Depended on scholarships and whether or not he’d saved enough during the summer, because school was not cheap.
But fuck if he didn’t want to get the hell out of dodge as quickly as humanly possible.
Closing his locker without bothering to lock it—what was the point, they’d broken into it once already—Stiles turned away from it to head down the corridor in the opposite direction of the rich assholes who were still laughing.
Calling them bullies sounded so fucking juvenile, but that was legitimately what they were. Bullies. A group of rich assholes who got away with everything who’d been terrorizing Stiles every waking moment since eighth grade.
His dad was the sheriff of Beacon Hills, and while he was generally well-liked, back in the eighth grade when Stiles was a wee little one of just fourteen years of age, one of his classmates had thrown a party at his place because his parents were out of town.
They were only fourteen, so it wasn’t a huge rager or anything with booze and drugs or whatever, but a few of the older kids had shown up and things had gotten a little crazy. Someone had called in a noise complaint around two in the morning, and Stiles’ dad happened to be the one responding to it.
He’d kicked everyone out and had called his classmate’s parents, even though said classmate had insisted he would pay him to just piss off and let them all have their fun.
His dad wasn’t the sort of person people could just pay off, especially when he saw a fourteen year old kid home alone throwing parties.
Needless to say, despite Stiles not even having been at the party, since he was across the literal world visiting his grandparents when all this had happened, his dad ruining a good party was social suicide for Stiles.
When everyone had come back from winter break, Stiles was the one who paid the price for his father doing the right thing. Because kids were logical that way and clearly it was fair to punish Stiles for something he had nothing to do with.
And so began the worst four years of Stiles’ young life. In tenth grade, the bullying had gotten so bad he’d legitimately had a fight with his dad to go to a boarding school somewhere else, anywhere else. The only reason his dad hadn’t agreed was because they couldn’t afford it, which was a reasonable answer, though not one Stiles had appreciated at the time.
His dad ended up talking to the principal about how bad things were getting for Stiles, and while the assholes had been spoken to, their parents had predictably gotten up in arms about their precious babies being accused of such horrid things and had gone to the school board to get the principal fired. They’d tried going after his dad as well, and while they had a lot of pull, the mayor and his dad had a pretty good relationship after years of working together so thankfully that was one battle they’d lost.
After seeing the damage money could do to people, Stiles decided he didn’t want to risk his dad’s job again, so he told him to drop it and started counting down the days to graduation.
Now, he only had this final school year left, and he never had to see any of these selfish, childish pieces of shit ever again. Small victory, but a victory all the same. He was going to make it through the school year and be done with them forever.
Stiles set his bag down on the counter in the bathroom, then pulled his over-shirt off, checking it for any burrito bits and setting it aside when he found it to be relatively unscathed. Removing his graphic tee, he turned the water on in the sink and began trying to scrub at the food stains in hopes that he could salvage the shirt. He didn’t care so much about his jeans, so once he was satisfied with his shirt, he grabbed some paper towels, wet them, and then began to clean off the mess on the front of his pants.
It made it look like he’d wet himself, but he didn’t worry about it. He’d fared worse than people teasing him about pissing his pants.
He tensed instinctively when the door opened, but a quick glance up had him relax ever so slightly.
“Here. You can use it to clean up your locker, too. I don’t need it back.”
“Thanks,” Stiles said, taking the offered towel, and as quickly as Danny Mahealani had appeared, he disappeared back out of the bathroom.
Stiles was relieved that Danny hadn’t stuck around. He set the towel aside on the counter and got to work washing his face and arms, along with trying to get beef out of his hair.
He and Danny were friends, of a sort. He’d started at Beacon Hills High in tenth grade when the worst of the bullying was happening. He’d tried to make friendly with Stiles, but the rich assholes had started to make Danny’s life miserable just for associating with him. Danny was a nice guy, and had the unenviable position of being the new guy in town while also happening to be gay.
The bullies had gone after him horribly, and Stiles knew it was because Danny was being nice to him. He’d told Danny to just forget it, and while the other teen had tried valiantly for close to three months to convince Stiles he could handle a little bullying, eventually it became clear Stiles wasn’t interested in his pity and Danny left him alone.
He still showed up every now and then to help him when things like this happened, but he disappeared relatively quickly thereafter because he knew Stiles would snap at him to piss off if he didn’t. Stiles really liked Danny, and he didn’t want him to end up on the receiving end of this shit just for associating with him.
Ever since they’d made it clear they weren’t friends, the bullies had been leaving Danny alone, and he had his own group of friends he hung out with at lunch and after school. Stiles wasn’t surprised, he was a super nice guy. He’d have liked to get to know him better, but he didn’t want him to get dragged down to his level again.
Stiles had lost a lot of friends because of his bullies, but he didn’t let it bother him. He’d rather be the only one suffering his way through high school, he had thick skin, he’d long ago learned to just take it. The worst thing he could do was show the assholes who did this that it affected him, so indifference was safer.
Finishing up in the bathroom, Stiles pulled his over-shirt back on and buttoned it up, even though that wasn’t really what this shirt was for. He didn’t want to put the soaking tee back on, so this was the better option.
When he went back out into the corridor, most of the students had left, so he headed for the parking lot to drop his stuff off in his car before tackling his locker. Thankfully the dickwads hadn’t damaged his car today, so that was a small win. He hated coming out to find his tires flat or windows broken. He usually didn’t bother fixing the latter unless it was the windshield, because the number of windows that had been broken over the past few years was astronomical.
They keyed his car every now and then as well, but Stiles’ Jeep was older than he was and more than a little rough around the edges, so he legitimately didn’t care about a few more scratches or dings to the body of it.
Once everything was safely tucked away, he scanned the lot to be sure all the cars of concern were gone, and nodded to himself when he found the worst offenders had left.
Heading back inside, he hunted down the janitor—whose name was Kenneth, was very nice, and pitied Stiles harder than probably anyone else in the school—to grab a bucket, and then went back to his locker. He was pretty sure parts of the burrito had expired, because it smelled pretty bad already when he made it back there. He emptied his locker so he could clean it more easily, and used the towel Danny had given him to make sure it was spotless.
He’d have to buy Danny a new towel, because he definitely wasn’t giving this back to him. He felt like no amount of washing would get that stench out.
Deciding maybe using a locker this year would be a bad idea—at least until after the fuckheads forgot about using it against him—he just gathered up all his books in a pile and left them against the wall while making his way to the janitor’s closet again. He emptied out the dirty bucket, rinsed it out and then put it back. He tossed Danny’s soiled towel into a plastic bag he found on one of the shelves, and grabbed another bag to carry some of his books in.
When he got back to his locker, he gathered up all his belongings, and then headed out of the school once more, the lot much emptier now than it had been earlier. He didn’t dwell on it, tossing his books into the back seat of the Jeep, along with the dirty towel, and then climbed behind the wheel.
He sat there for a moment, staring out the windshield, and tried to convince himself that everything was fine. Everything was fine, he was great, and even though he’d spend the whole weekend alone gaming in his room and watching Netflix, he was okay.
Stiles was totally okay. He’d been alone most of his life, he was totally and completely fine being alone.
Not lonely at all.
Stiles had learned early on in his shitty school life that, of all the worst possible times of day, the number one on his list had to be lunch period. He literally used to hide out in one of the unused bathrooms to eat his lunch in peace, but that idea had gone down the shitter—no pun intended—near the end of last year when the lead rich fuck of the popular crowd, and the one his dad had gotten in trouble with his parents, had discovered his safe haven.
Ever since then, Matthew Daehler and his stupid goons had gone out of their way to use that bathroom, especially during lunch period.
Joke was on them though, because now that they were seniors, they got a longer lunch break, and Stiles happened to have a free period after lunch which meant he had almost an hour and a half for his “lunch” break.
He’d been trying to find ways to escape the bullying all summer to be prepared for senior year and thankfully, he’d managed it and now had a foolproof way of being left alone during lunch break.
That being: he just left the school.
He technically wasn’t permitted off school grounds during lunch break, but the one and only teacher in the school who actually gave two shits about his mental health—that being the guidance counsellor, Marin Morrell—had managed to get him approval to leave school grounds every day for lunch provided he was back in time for his next class.
Which, again, was after his free period. Plenty of time for him to be left in peace.
That was how he found himself walking through the woods behind the school towards his new favourite lunch spot. It definitely beat a bathroom, that was for sure, and he was quite pleased not to get dowsed in milk or coke or any other form of beverage by the popular crowd, which was what he’d grown used to in ninth and tenth grade.
But not last year, and not this year! Oh no, he had a plan. A solid plan! And he was quite pleased with this plan, even if it was a bit of a trek.
There was an old, burned out husk of a house out in the Preserve the school backed onto that had been abandoned for years, and Stiles had stumbled upon it during the summer while out biking in the woods.
He knew whose house it was, everyone knew whose house it was. The Hales. They used to be a big thing in Beacon Hills years ago, he was pretty sure Mrs. Hale had been mayor a few times when he was a kid but he didn’t honestly remember her. They were an extremely rich and affluent family—in a way, Stiles was glad not to have another rich family in town making his life miserable.
What had happened to them was a tragedy, and still mostly an unsolved case. There had been a fire in the middle of the night, and everyone in the house had died. Apparently there was a family gathering of sorts that night, so it hadn’t just been the immediate Hale family who’d died, but a large number of the Hales.
The only known survivors were the three children—Laura, Derek and Cora—and their uncle, Peter Hale, who was in a coma. Stiles didn’t really know much about them, Laura had packed up her siblings and left soon after the fire, and Peter Hale had unfortunately succumbed to his injuries before long and hadn’t made it.
As far as Stiles knew, the siblings had moved to New York where Laura had been fighting hard to maintain custody of her brother and sister so they wouldn’t end up in foster care. She had enough money to support them, given her parents had been stinking rich, and while she was only eighteen at the time, she was still legally an adult and thus wasn’t about to let her brother and sister out of her sight after having lost the rest of her family.
Stiles knew his dad had kept in touch with them as best he could for a few years, but eventually he’d lost track of them. Stiles knew it bothered him sometimes, not knowing what had happened to the three Hales, but there was nothing to be done about it. He couldn’t go after teens who didn’t want to be found.
They were probably living it up on some remote island somewhere, considering the money they had. Stiles didn’t know if it was a business or just an inheritance, but he knew from overhearing conversations his dad had with various people that the Hales were more than comfortable, and would be until the day they died, and then some.
Stiles was jealous, not that it mattered. He supposed having all the money in the world didn’t make up for the family they’d lost, so he tried not to be too bitter about it.
The Hale house had been abandoned when the siblings had left, and given it hadn’t even been torn down after the fire, it had kind of been left to sit and rot in the woods for the past few years. Stiles wasn’t sure how old he was when the fire had happened, but he knew it was just a bit before the bullying had started, so probably around twelve or thirteen. The youngest Hale, Cora, was his age, and her brother Derek was three years older than them. Laura would have to be two years older than Derek given she’d been eighteen when the fire had happened.
Stiles couldn’t imagine what it would be like losing everyone and having to take care of two other people. He could hardly take care of himself—he did okay taking care of his dad though—so he felt like having to raise two other kids couldn’t have been easy for her.
So, the Hale house just sat here, in the middle of the Preserve, with no one in sight.
And only a twelve minute walk from the high school at a good pace.
It was the perfect place for Stiles to eat his lunch in peace. He could just chill out on the rotted, burned out front porch and eat his burrito and chips without having to worry about someone ‘accidentally’ dumping an entire can of Coke on his head.
Coke was the literal worst, he hated it when they used that. While milk, yogurt and juice—the other popular choices—were annoying and gross, Coke was just so sticky. He literally went to the locker room to shower every time he got Coke dumped on him, but even that could come at a price sometimes because one time they’d stolen his fucking clothes. Stiles had been forced to walk through the hallway to the front desk in a fucking towel, and his least favourite teacher Mr. Harris had given him detention for indecent exposure when Stiles literally didn’t have a choice.
And he’d been wearing a towel, so Mr. Harris could shove his indecent exposure claims right up his tight ass.
Pushing aside some branches while he walked, Stiles made it out into the small clearing that he supposed was more of a front yard for the Hales. The road that had previously led up to the front door was overgrown and difficult to even discern anymore, and Stiles couldn’t help but wonder sometimes about why the Hales had lived out in the middle of nowhere.
His dad had always said they liked nature, but Stiles felt like this was extreme. They literally lived in the middle of the Preserve, and while he was sure the road that no longer existed—or needed some upkeep, at any rate—helped with the travel to and from town, it was still a super weird place to live.
Money, he supposed. It bought people whatever they wanted.
Walking up to the front of the house, Stiles looked up at it, as he had done every time he’d come by to eat his lunch. It had really only been about five times, this being the sixth, but the house was extremely impressive. He wished he’d had the chance to see it before the fire, he was sure it was huge and gorgeous.
Every now and then he felt tempted to explore inside the house, just to see what had survived of the decor, but he knew better than to do something stupid like that. His dad would murder him. Even if Stiles died because he like, fell through the floor and got impaled on something, his dad would find him in the afterlife, bring him back, and murder him again. A place like this, falling apart, both rotted and structurally unsound from the fire, was not a place to explore just for funsies.
Still, it intrigued him. He wondered what it must’ve been like living in there. He was sure they got a lot of bugs, considering they were in the middle of the woods. Stiles found bugs in his house all the time and he lived in the suburbs, so he was sure living out here was worse.
Sitting down in his usual spot on the front porch, he pulled his bag off his shoulders and dug through it for his lunch. He didn’t have anything overly impressive, just a spicy chicken burrito he’d made with leftovers, a small bag of Doritos and a Brisk iced tea. It was a lunch, at any rate, and it was tasty, so he wasn’t picky.
Unwrapping his meal, he pulled his phone out and began to scroll through Reddit while he ate, the sounds around him seeming almost amplified because of the lack of other humans around. Nature was really loud when there weren’t cars and various electronics around to drown them out. He felt like he’d hate to live out in the country, the sound of nature would keep him up even more than the occasional backfiring car at home did.
He was halfway through his burrito when he heard a noise in the woods on the school side and his head whipped in that direction, feeling his stomach drop.
Fuck, had someone followed him out there? He didn’t want to lose his new lunch spot! His only alternative would be to eat in his car, and he hated eating in his car, it was already suffering enough without Stiles accidentally dropping a sub full of like, mustard or whatever into the partition.
He waited, one hand near his mouth holding his burrito, and the other still holding his phone, eyes locked on the trees. He was convinced he was about to get a water balloon to the face or something if Matt and his rich friends had found out where he slunk off to every day to eat his lunch in peace.
For a while, nothing happened, and eventually, Stiles determined everything was fine. Maybe he was paranoid, maybe it was a raccoon, maybe he needed therapy.
To be fair, he probably needed therapy, the past few years had been pretty hellish for him.
Returning his attention to his phone, he took another bite of his burrito, scrolling to a sub-reddit about entitled people—those were always hilarious to read—when he heard the sound again. He whipped his head towards the trees, seeing the leaves swaying slightly, and figured it had to be the wind.
Just when he’d turned his head back to his phone, he caught sight of something big and black in front of him and looked up.
The sound that left him was actually quite painful, because he’d let out a shout with his mouth shut in an attempt to not shout. He puffed out his cheeks, struggling to keep all the sound inside, and slowly let air escape from between his lips.
Damn that was a big fucking dog, holy shit. He’d seen a lot of big dogs in his life, what with his dad working at the police station and them having a K-9 unit, but hot damn was this ever a big fucking dog. Like, massive. Jesus Christ. It almost looked like a fucking wolf, but there were no wolves in California, so Stiles knew it had to be a dog.
“Hi,” he said in a strangled voice, because this thing was literally massive. He’d never seen a dog this size, it was like a small horse. Stiles could probably get on its back and ride it around the old front yard without having to try too hard to keep his feet off the ground, and he wasn’t a short person. He was a comfortable 5'11" so that was saying something.
The dog was sitting a few feet away from him, right near the edge of the old gravel path that led up to the house. It didn’t seem to be aggressive, which was good for Stiles, because he was pretty sure this dog could eat his whole head in one bite. Seriously, did dogs come in size extra large? Fuck.
Stiles sat on the porch, staying perfectly still, as if that would keep him safe from this monster of a dog. It occurred to him he might be mistaking dogs for sharks, what with the whole sitting still thing, but he was kind of worried about it attacking him.
So far so good. It seemed to be pretty chill, as far as he could tell. It was just sitting there staring at him. One ear kept flicking slightly, like the dog could hear something, but it was far off enough that it wasn’t concerned.
Stiles glanced at his burrito briefly, then back at the dog, and saw the tail end of it licking its chops.
Oh. Right, that made sense. The dog didn’t look to have a collar, at least from this distance anyway, so it had probably heard Stiles and maybe smelled the food? Stiles didn’t know how far dogs could smell, but evidently far enough to have been able to smell his lunch.
Stiles was okay sacrificing his burrito if it meant keeping all his limbs.
“Uh, are you hungry?” he asked the dog, feeling kind of stupid for talking to an animal, but people did that all the time, didn’t they? It was a thing people did.
He held the burrito out slightly in inquiry, and the dog tilted its head to one side. It was kind of adorable, in a totally terrifying way.
Stiles had his chips, he could afford to lose the burrito. Besides, the dog looked a little thin, and given its size, that probably meant it was underfed. Maybe he was an idiot for throwing his lunch at a stray dog, but whatever, people could call him a bleeding heart. He lived a life of hell at school, and he didn’t feel the need to take his anger out on a dog.
Pulling the cling wrap off the end of his meal, he shifted forward a bit without fully standing, not wanting to seem threatening, and then tossed what was left of his burrito towards where the dog was sitting. He missed him by quite a bit, because Stiles wasn’t exactly the best at hand-eye coordination, but the dog didn’t seem to mind.
It watched the arc of Stiles’ throw, and then turned to stare at the rest of the burrito he’d tossed in its direction. At first, the dog just sat there. Stiles was kind of annoyed he might’ve just wasted half his lunch, but then slowly, the dog stood and took a few steps towards the burrito, sniffing at it with interest before grabbing it between its very sharp teeth.
Damn, it looked even bigger standing up.
Once it had eaten Stiles’ pathetic lunch, it turned to him while licking its chops and Stiles grinned.
“Good, right? Considering I made it with leftovers, can’t complain on the flavour.”
The dog stood there for a moment, still licking what was probably ranch off its chops, and then turned to walk towards Stiles.
Uh oh. That was kind of all he had, he was pretty sure dogs shouldn’t eat chips.
“Uh, no. No, no,” he insisted, slowly getting to his feet and holding both hands out in surrender. “I don’t have anything else. I’m—I only have chips, which probably aren’t good for you.”
The dog kept coming, and Stiles was ready to test the weight of the stairs inside the dilapidated house when the dog stopped just at the bottom of the steps and sat. Then it lay down. Then it rolled onto its side and lay there, and Stiles realized it had picked the spot in front of the house where the sun came through the trees just right for it to sunbathe.
Letting out a slow sigh of relief, he slowly sat back down at the top of the steps, the dog’s visible ear flicking, as if tracking his movements, but it didn’t open its eyes.
The dog lying lengthwise was longer than the porch steps, holy shit.
Sitting motionless for a few seconds, as if wanting to be sure the dog was happy and not about to turn around to eat him, Stiles let out a slow sigh of relief and dug his drink and chips out of his bag. The dog’s closest eye opened when Stiles opened the Brisk, but closed again relatively quickly, as if just checking on what he was doing.
It didn’t even do that when Stiles opened his bag of Doritos and popped a chip into his mouth, phone tucked away safely in his bag.
“What are you doing all the way out here anyway?” Stiles asked, despite knowing this was a literal animal and he wasn’t going to be getting any answers. “Kind of far from town, did you get lost? I feel like you must have a shitty owner if you got lost, you’re kind of huge. Hard to miss.”
The dog didn’t react to anything he was saying, like it didn’t mind the sound of his voice, so Stiles just kept talking while he ate his bag of chips, putting the trash back into his bag when he was done since he wasn’t about to litter all the way out here.
He drank his Brisk slowly, leaning forward with his forearms along his thighs, staring out at the scenery around him. It was really nice out here, he could understand why the dog had found its way there.
It seemed to be a super chill dog, honestly. It didn’t get all jumpy or worried whenever Stiles shifted, and it barely ever opened one eye to check on him, as if not at all concerned to be around a human. Made sense, dogs and humans were pretty inseparable. Stiles would love to have a dog, but they were expensive, and he and his dad were barely scraping by as it was. Best to not rock the boat by adding a dog into the mix.
When Stiles was finished with his drink, he set it down beside his bag since he didn’t want to dirty the inside of it with any remaining liquid and dug his phone back out. He browsed through his usual sub-Reddits while keeping an eye on the time, and when it was getting close to the middle of his free period, he figured he should head back so he wasn’t late.
Putting his phone into his pocket, he stood and hauled his bag over his shoulder. The dog opened one eye again to watch him, but didn’t move otherwise while Stiles bent down to grab at his empty can so he could recycle it at school.
He looked down at the dog for a few seconds, because it was kind of blocking the bottom of the stairs, but he could get around him on the left where its hind-quarters were so he walked down the stairs and slowly stepped over it. The dog didn’t so much as flick its tail.
“Well, it’s been fun, but I need to get back. Enjoy the sunshine, big guy.” He smiled at the dog while slowly walking backwards towards the trees. He wasn’t worried it would attack him, not really, but he still didn’t want to test that theory by turning his back on it.
Once he was through the tree-line, he turned and began walking back towards school, taking his time with it since he didn’t have any reason to rush. He turned when he heard movement in the trees behind him, but saw nothing. Not dwelling on it too much, he continued on his way until he finally reached the back lot of the school close to where the lacrosse field was.
Walking up to the back door of the gym, he dropped his can into the recycling bin beside it and opened the door. When he walked into the school, he turned to make sure the large door didn’t slam, and paused when he noticed the dog sitting just beyond the tree-line, watching him.
Had it followed him all the way back there? Shit, maybe Stiles had encouraged it with the food, he hoped it didn’t think he was its new owner or anything.
Not worrying about it, he finished with shutting the door, and then turned to walk through the locker room towards the main corridor so he could go to the library to finish out the rest of his free period.
The day wasn’t over yet, much as he wished it was.
Stiles’ morning had been so atrociously awful that he’d honestly forgotten about his new dog friend from yesterday. It didn’t help that he had fucking gym first period, which he still thought was the dumbest thing in the world, because then everyone was exhausted for the rest of the fucking day.
Though gym in general was also just a fucking giant pain in his ass, because it was easy for the rich fucks to get one over on him under the guise of just playing around. While Coach Finstock was usually pretty good about not letting anyone be an asshole—not because he was noble or anything, he just hated assholes in general—Matt and his friends always managed to make like Stiles was a clumsy idiot.
Today was no exception, given they were playing dodgeball. Stiles wanted to find and murder the motherfucker who’d created this stupid game. And if they were already dead, he wanted to kill them again somehow. He hoped they were being tortured in the ninth circle of hell for all eternity because fuck this game. Fuck this game so fucking hard.
Like, whose dumbass idea was it to create a game like this? “Hey, you know what’d be super fun? Having a game where the sole purpose is to give people you hate a fucking concussion! All right!”
Stiles wasn’t actually bad at this game overall, he was good at dodging, but when there were twelve players on each side, and eight of them on the opposing team were aiming for him, there was really only so much he could do. He kept getting balls to the face, balls to the groin, and he got a particularly hard one to the gut at one point that had him almost throw up he dry-heaved so bad.
He tried to catch some of the balls thrown at him, but they were thrown so hard that half of them just bent his fingers backwards and honestly broke skin from the stress in the webbing. It was not fun times for him, but he wasn’t going to let them get to him, so he just did his best to play the game like it wasn’t a literal fight for his life.
After another hard hit to the back of his head that had him face-plant, Coach told the other team to stop aiming for him on purpose because it was making the game boring to watch. Stiles wiped blood from his chin, tonguing at the split in his lip, and winced while reaching up for his forehead. He saw blood on his fingers when he pulled his hand back and realized he must’ve smacked it harder than he’d realized.
Great, now he’d have to visit the nurse, who fucking hated him and also thought he was accident prone.
Struggling back to his feet, he swallowed blood to avoid spitting it out onto the hard floor of the gym, and slowly walked around the outside of the court to get to the prison area behind the other team again. He’d spent a majority of the game walking back and forth because he was the only person they were really aiming for, and Danny—bless him—kept throwing his shots wide to give Stiles a chance to catch one and earn his freedom with a hit from behind.
There were only three other people in ‘prison’ with him, and they all got ready for the balls to come their way so they could earn their freedom. Danny went wide again, as he’d been doing every time Stiles was back there, and while one of Matt’s cronies tried to grab for it, he missed and it bounced right into Stiles’ waiting hands. He then slammed it into the back of the idiot’s head, which had him stumble, lose his footing, and face-plant just like they’d done to Stiles a moment ago.
He was immeasurably satisfied with that, even though he knew he’d be feeling it later. He was going to get paid back for that somehow, he was sure.
The look he got from Danny when he rejoined the team on the other side of the court proved he knew it too.
When class ended and they were dismissed, Stiles took his time getting back into the locker room, wanting to have as little time as possible outside supervision. Eventually he couldn’t procrastinate any longer or he’d be late for his next class, so he went to change out. Most people showered, but Stiles didn’t anymore if he could help it after his walk of shame through the school. He usually just splashed water on his face, overloaded on deodorant and called it a day.
Predictably when he walked into the locker room, he was immediately grabbed and slammed into a row of lockers by Brett Talbot, who was the one Stiles had face-planted.
“You think you’re funny, Stilinski?”
“I’ve been known to elicit a chuckle or two,” Stiles said easily, which just had him pulled forward and slammed into the lockers a second time. He winced, despite himself, because a lock was hitting him just right in the base of the spine and it hurt.
“Leave him alone, Brett,” someone insisted from the other side of the locker room. Stiles was pretty sure it was Greenberg, but he knew he wouldn’t come to his defence. No one did anymore, and he was a big boy. He could deal with his own problems.
“Try that shit again, and you’ll be the first eighteen year old wearing dentures,” Brett threatened.
“You know there are medical conditions that do have some people wearing dentures in their teens, right? That’s pretty insensitive of you.”
Stiles felt like he could see Danny through the lockers, because he was sure the other teen was making a face at him for stirring the pot. Stiles had a smart mouth, he couldn’t help it. It was just who he was.
Brett’s face twisted, and when Matt joined them and sneered in Stiles’ face that the year was only just starting and to be fucking careful, Stiles just shrugged indifferently at them. The best thing for him to do right now was to act like he gave exactly zero shits about their bullying.
Nothing bullies hated more than for their bullying to be of little consequence to the party being bullied.
Brett pulled him away from the lockers, and Stiles braced himself for another slam backwards, but instead Brett tossed him sideways. Stiles hit four locks and an open locker door on his way to the ground, slamming one elbow into the bench between the rows of lockers and feeling pain lance up both arms.
“Hey!” Danny insisted, having come around the corner. “We’re gonna be late and you’re going to damage something. Knock it off.”
“Knock it off,” Matt mimicked, like the very mature person he was, but he at least smacked Brett in the chest with the back of one hand and motioned for them to leave. Stiles hadn’t noticed they’d showered and dressed, but he was grateful for their departure all the same.
As the rich fucks all filed out of the locker room, they left behind the rest of the grade, most of whom had literally no beef with Stiles, but were too worried about their own social suicide to help him.
Except Danny, at any rate, but Stiles still didn’t want him helping him for his own sake.
He did take the hand he offered him though, letting Danny help him up and wincing in pain. He ached all over honestly, and he had blood on his hands from all the broken skin from the hard balls. His right arm was on fire, he’d probably hit his funny bone on the bench. His left arm was burning though, and when he noticed Danny looking at it with concern, he glanced down at it.
Great, he had a huge gash along his forearm, probably from the sharp edge of the locker he’d hit on his way down.
“Your head is bleeding, too,” Danny informed him.
Stiles reached up for the wound from earlier, but it wasn’t bleeding anymore. The blood Danny saw was just dried blood at this point.
“It’s fine. Whatever. Thanks for the hand up.” Stiles moved past him towards the showers, since the balance of the assholes had left the locker room. He didn’t worry about the people left stealing his clothes. He’d be late for third period, but whatever, he’d have to go to the nurse anyway to get his arm checked so he could just double-up on that excuse when he got to class.
He showered quickly, in the process of drying off when the bell rang to signal the class change. He hurried to get dressed, alone in the locker room now, and was on his way out and to the nurse’s when the second bell rang. He made it there relatively quickly, the woman giving him an annoyed look when he knocked on the door but motioning him in anyway.
She was still as rough as she always was while checking him over, though did seem to pause slightly at the sight of his injured arm. He told her how it happened when she asked, but she didn’t request any elaboration and seemed to think he’d just tripped over his own feet and hurt himself on the lockers.
She cleaned it, covered it with gauze, and bandaged it up, grunting for him to make sure he kept it clean and to come back tomorrow if he had concerns about it. He appreciated that, but hoped it wasn’t too severe and would just heal on its own if he didn’t aggravate it.
Couldn’t control what Matt would do, but whatever.
The rest of his injuries got Band-Aids, the nurse putting one rather painfully over the cut on his head, insisting it was fine and she was just doing it to keep the blood out of his eyes. He let her work as she put more on the various cuts on his hand, and she gave him an Icy-Hot patch for his back where the lock had dug into his spine.
When he wished her a good day, she muttered for him to get out of her office and he shut the door behind her. On his way to class, he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe the teachers—Coach, Morrell, the nurse, everyone barring Harris, at least—actually recognized how shitty Stiles’ school life was, but were too afraid to do anything about it. After all, the principal had been replaced with just one phone call from Matt’s parents, and it wasn’t exactly easy to get a new job in such a small town, so Stiles wondered if maybe they did their best with him, but never made it obvious.
After all, much as Stiles felt like the nurse hated him, she’d been the one to ask about his back when she noticed him rubbing it. She’d given him the Icy-Hot without him even asking for it. And she’d told him to come back if his arm still bothered him, something she’d done back in April for his black eye, as well.
And Coach didn’t care about the game, but he’d insisted watching them gang up on Stiles was boring, so maybe that was his subtle way of trying to get the assholes to leave him alone.
He didn’t know, maybe it was wishful thinking. He supposed he had to think people could be good, or he’d lose his fucking mind.
Unsurprisingly, he was reprimanded in front of the class when he walked in late, but when he motioned his bandaged arm and the teacher got a good look at him, she motioned for him to just sit down and to stop being disruptive. Brett was in that class, and he looked smug as Stiles took his seat, clearly pleased with the amount of damage he’d inflicted.
Rich fucks, Stiles hated all of them. He hoped every single piece of shit rich asshole in school who got away with doing whatever they wanted to him lost all their money the second they left high school. Imagine being this fucking childish over something that happened years ago that Stiles had had literally nothing to do with.
He did his best to ignore everyone for the rest of class, especially when Brett and his neighbour started pelting paper footballs at the back of his head whenever the teacher wasn’t looking. Stiles felt like he deserved some kind of award for how much patience he had.
By the time lunch rolled around, he was desperate for an escape from the place and had honestly never left his seat so fast in his life when the bell rang. He hurried out of the school and raced through the trees, only slowing to a walk once he was sure the school was far behind him.
His face hurt from all the balls he’d taken to it, and his stomach was still pretty upset from the hard blow that had almost made him puke up his breakfast. He honestly wasn’t sure he wanted to eat lunch, but his mad dash out of there wasn’t so much related to the food part of all this. It was more about the escape from the assholes who made his life miserable.
Reaching the Hale house, he started around the front so he could go sit in his usual spot on the porch, but stopped short when he found his spot already taken.
The huge black dog from yesterday was currently lying on its side, basking in the sunlight at the top of the porch steps. It didn’t even react at Stiles’ approach, clearly content to be taking up his favourite place to sit.
“Sure, why not?” Stiles muttered, turning to head for a shaded area by the trees. “Ruin my day more, not like it can get any worse.”
He noticed the dog lift its head out of his peripheral vision, but didn’t turn. He just went to find a patch of grass that was shaded enough he wouldn’t burn, but sunny enough that he wouldn’t freeze. It was September, and while California didn’t get freezing cold, it still got pretty chilly in the fall and winter months.
Falling onto his ass, he pulled his bag off his shoulders and dropped it on his right, digging through it for his lunch. He’d made himself a tuna fish sandwich today with a bottle of water. He’d forgotten to buy some chips from the vending machine, but he honestly wasn’t sure he was feeling food right now anyway, given how his stomach was feeling.
Stiles was staring down at his sandwich, still contemplating what he wanted to do, when he heard footsteps approaching. Turning, he saw the large dog making its way over to him, but it stopped a few feet away, sitting down and staring at him, like it wasn’t sure of its welcome.
More likely it was scared of him or something, which was laughable, because it could literally eat Stiles’ face in one huge bite.
Eying the dog for a few seconds, he looked back down at his lunch, unwrapped it, then tossed it over in the dog’s direction. It lowered its gaze to it, then looked back up at Stiles.
“I’ll probably puke if I eat it anyway,” he muttered, turning to put the cling wrap into his bag to toss out later. “Someone might as well enjoy it.”
The dog didn’t move for a few seconds, and then slowly stood and walked a few paces to close the distance. It watched Stiles while bending down to grab the sandwich, the bread and fish disappearing behind sharp teeth in one bite.
Art by Fox
Stiles noticed the dog’s eyes were red. He’d never seen a dog with red eyes before, but he knew it was possible. Some people had weird eye colours, and animals especially had weird eye colours, so he didn’t dwell on it.
Sighing, he fell onto his back in the grass, kind of annoyed the dog had stolen his spot and then promptly vacated it the second Stiles was settled elsewhere. Whatever, people at school were out to get him, why not dogs, too?
He could hear the dog’s steps moving closer, and tried not to tense when its large frame appeared right beside him, the dog staring down at him. Its eyes shifted to Stiles’ bandaged arm, then his hands, then his face. It was weird, it was almost like it was inspecting every inch of him and categorizing his injuries.
But he knew it wasn’t, it was a fucking dog. It was probably trying to figure out if Stiles had any more food on him. That, or it was deciding what part of Stiles would be the meatiest.
After a while, the dog did that usual dog thing Stiles always saw on TV, where it turned in a circle by his waist and then lay down heavily with a thump, curling into a sort of ball beside him and closing its eyes.
Stiles let out a huff of a laugh, shaking his head, and brought one hand down towards the dog. He hesitated for a moment, hand hovering, but eventually he slowly lowered it until he touched coarse fur. It felt rougher than he’d been expecting, but that seemed to just be the top layer, it was softer underneath, and he let his hand slide along the dog’s flank slowly before lifting it and repeating the process from the top.
“How come you’re all the way out here, huh?” Stiles asked, the dog’s ear flicking but otherwise not reacting to his voice. “I know why I’m out here. You might have stolen my spot today, but fair warning, I’m going to be coming here every day until graduation for lunch.”
The dog’s head lifted then, shifting around slightly so it could rest its chin on Stiles’ stomach, red eyes looking up at him. As weird as it was talking to a dog, it felt nice to have someone to talk to, even if they couldn’t talk back.
“Yeah, sorry. I’m gonna be raining on your parade five days a week. If I promise to bring snacks for you, try to forgive me. School’s not... really my favourite place to be.”
The dog kept staring at him, its eyes so intelligent that Stiles almost felt like he was talking to a person and not an animal.
Even though he knew it wouldn’t make any kind of difference, he told the dog about his issues at school, and mentioned the fact that he was so fucking injured today because dodgeball was the worst and rich assholes didn’t like being shown up. It felt kind of nice to unload, just say the words aloud where someone was listening.
It didn’t matter that the someone listening was a dog, at least he wasn’t keeping it all bottled up inside like he had to do at school. Or like he did at home. His dad knew things were bad at school, he wasn’t an idiot, and he wasn’t blind. But Stiles never really told him about how bad it got sometimes because he didn’t want his dad to go back on his whole crusade of getting Matthew Daehler and his dumb friends expelled.
All that would do was cost his father his job, and he’d worked hard to become sheriff. Stiles didn’t want him to jeopardize that just because of a few bullies.
They’d get what was coming to them in university anyway. There were no popular people in university, because for one thing, it was too big and impossible to form cliques like that, and for another, people had to grow the fuck up in university.
Man, Stiles couldn’t wait to go to university. It would be so nice to finally not hate going to school. He actually quite liked school itself. He liked learning things. He often watched things like the History Channel or National Geographic and whatnot at home when he was bored because some of that shit was interesting.
It was the people at school he hated, not the schooling itself.
The dog listened to him the whole time he spoke, eyes on his face even when Stiles shifted his own gaze elsewhere. It was surprisingly therapeutic, spewing his anger and frustration out while petting a dog. He actually got so distracted that he forgot he was on lunch break and when he realized he’d been out there for a while and checked his phone, he only had ten minutes to get back to school for next period.
He definitely didn’t want his leaving school property privileges taken away, so he jerked to his feet urgently, the dog scrambling up with him, as if worried it had missed a threat. He bid his new friend goodbye and then ran all the way back to school. He was a sweating, panting mess when he reached the doors, but he’d made it, and when he turned to close it quietly behind him like he always did, he saw his new doggy friend hanging out by the tree-line again.
Smiling, and kind of pleased to have a new confidant, Stiles waved like an idiot and shut the door behind him.
Stiles didn’t know what the commotion was, but he also kind of didn’t care, if he was honest. Another one of Matt’s cronies, Nolan Holloway, had purposefully slammed into him between classes so that Stiles slammed into the wall, hitting his injured arm against it hard enough that blood seeped through his bandages. He’d had to return to the nurse’s office, and was late to his last class of the day, which happened to be chemistry with Mr. Harris.
He was less understanding of Stiles’ need to see the nurse, and gave him a Friday detention for being late. Whatever, not like Stiles had anything better to do on Fridays, anyway.
He’d packed up and left the class immediately after it was done, but had stopped in the bathroom to procrastinate going outside for a while since he wanted to wait for Matt and his friends to dissipate. His arm was still pulsing painfully from the added blow to it, and he honestly wondered if it would have the chance to heal if he kept getting thrown around.
Honestly, he was surprised Matt hadn’t dumped fucking acid on him in chemistry, since they’d been paired together for their experiment. Stiles could only assume even Matt wasn’t that stupid. Sure, he’d bully Stiles and push him around to his heart’s content, but he obviously knew there was a line not to cross.
At least acid was on the side of the line not to cross. Stiles was grateful.
He could hear people shouting angrily in the corridor while he stood in one of the stalls, back against the side while he played a puzzle game on his phone, but he wasn’t really listening to what was being said. When enough time had passed that he was sure the assholes were gone, he put his phone away and left the safety of the bathroom.
Unfortunately for him, Stiles was wrong about Matt and his cronies being gone, because apparently they were the source of the angry shouting. Though fortunately for him, Matt seemed too angry about whatever he was screaming at the principal about to notice Stiles, so he just quickly ducked down another corridor to make it outside the long way to his Jeep when the words being shouted reached him and gave him pause.
“I’m telling you, we need to call animal control! I saw it! I saw the fucking animals do it!”
It? What ‘it’? What had what done?
“Mr. Daehler, if you would please just calm do—”
“I’m not calming down until you call animal control! I fucking saw it! There were fucking wolves!”
“There are no wolves in California, Mr. Daehler,” the principal said, sounding exasperated, like this was the third time she’d said it to him.
“Well clearly there are!” he shouted back, showing such a lack of respect for the woman, Stiles had to applaud her for her fortitude not to smack him in the face.
“Perhaps you were mistaken,” she said calmly.
“No I wasn’t fucking mistaken,” Matt insisted, sounding incensed. “No way these were dogs, they were massive!”
For a second, Stiles felt like the world had slowed considerably as those words wormed their way into his brain. Because—he knew a dog that was massive. Honestly, he’d also brushed away the idea of the dog being a wolf because there were no wolves in California.
But... what if there were?
Holy shit, had Stiles literally spent his lunch break with a fucking wolf cuddled into his side while he pet it?! Good God, he was lucky to still have all his limbs!
Though now he was a little concerned, because while he had no idea how Matt, of all people, had seen the dog—wolf, whatever, animal—he knew he was going to raise hell to get what he wanted. Which seemed to be the animal dead, for whatever reason.
Stiles hoped his new dog-wolf friend kept out of sight for a while, maybe he’d try and like, pantomime staying by the Hale house when he went out there for lunch tomorrow. He didn’t really know how to explain to a dog-wolf thing to stay away from people, but given the principal seemed not to believe him about the whole wolf thing, Stiles wasn’t going to panic about it just yet.
Besides, both dogs and wolves were pretty freaking smart, and animal control wouldn’t show up until at least tomorrow if they were called. Stiles was sure he’d get a heads up from his dad if that was the case, and he’d go out to find his new friend immediately and like... he didn’t know. Maybe hide him in his cellar? His dad never went down there, so maybe it would be safe down there.
Whatever, he’d figure it out.
Exiting the school through the back, he had to walk all the way around the side to reach the parking lot, and was surprised at how many people were still there milling about. He could hear people whispering to each other, and even heard two girls say in quiet tones that they were glad it had happened to him, because he deserved it.
Stiles could only assume ‘he’ was Matt, but he didn’t know what any of them were talking about until he reached the Jeep and climbed into it. He tossed his bag into the passenger seat, slammed the door, and had just put the key in the ignition when he looked up and froze.
He was sitting a bit higher now that he was in the car, because of the kind of vehicle he had, so he now had a pretty good view of what everyone seemed to be looking at and whispering about.
Matt had a nice car. A very nice car. It probably cost more than Stiles’ dad’s mortgage payments over the past ten years. It was that kind of car. A muscle car that was basically just purchased because it looked good and reeked of money. It wasn’t fuel efficient, and it certainly wasn’t practical, but it was a nice car.
And that nice car had been completely destroyed.
Stiles’ jaw almost hit the floor of the Jeep when he saw it, because holy fucking shit. The hood was a mangled mess, like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it, except it was obviously just the weight of something extremely heavy jumping around on it. The sides were all scratched up with huge claw-marks, and all the tires were flat. There were bite-marks along most of the wheel wells, and the edge of the driver’s side door, the top of it bent out of shape like an animal had tried to tear the door clean off with its teeth.
The lights were smashed to shit, and while the windows were all still there, the ones currently visible to Stiles had cracks in them.
Something very big and very angry had come to tear the shit out of Matt’s car.
Stiles froze again as he replayed what Matt had said in the school. He’d said he’d seen it happen, which meant he knew for sure an animal had done this to his car, but that wasn’t what Stiles was thinking about.
He was more interested in the wolves part of that tirade.
Wolves.
Plural.
There were multiple dogs—wolves, whatever—in the woods right now. He’d only really met one of them, obviously, but there were more of them. And they’d...
They’d destroyed Matt’s car.
Stiles had been talking about his injuries and the bullying he endured at school on a daily basis because of Matt. He’d told his new furry friend all about the torture that was his life right then.
And Matt had seen dog-wolves running away after totally trashing his car.
Which meant his new friend—and his friend’s friends—had come to tear apart Matt’s super fancy car.
Because Stiles had bitched about him to an animal at lunch.
“What the fuck is going on?”
TBC...