Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Your grandmother’s coming to visit.”

Stiles, who up until this point wasn't paying the the slightest bit of attention to the conversation, looks up from his food and stares at his father. "What? When? When did this happen?”

“She just called me today,” the Sheriff says.

“Oh,” Stiles says, and his father rolls his eyes.

“It’s not the end of the world, son,” he says, patting Stiles on the arm.

“Yeah, I know, and I’ll be glad to see her, really, it’s just...” He trails off, and his dad’s eyes soften.

“I know it’s hard, son, but she’ll only be here for a week.”

It’s not that Stiles dislikes his grandmother; on the contrary, she’s lovely and clearly cares about him and his father a great deal. She just spends an incessant amount of time worrying about him, fussing over him, making helpful suggestions about, well, everything.

In a weird sort of way, it always makes him feel like he’s often letting her down, like he’s only adding to her stress, by the various failings of his life. He gets okay grades, but not amazing ones, and she worries about him getting into a good school (which she’s promised to pay for.)

Her sheer delight when he’d told her he’d made first line on the lacrosse team made him wish he could tell her more things to make her proud of him.

And never mind that he’s only seventeen and not even out of high school, “it would be so nice if you had someone special, Stiles,” is something she says in nearly every email since he turned sixteen.

Not that Stiles disagrees with her on that one. He doesn’t spend all his time thinking about it (between school, the pack, and the crazy shit that happens to him totally without his permission, he doesn’t have time to think about it), but it’s hard to see Scott and Allison together and not want that with someone. Especially in the last couple of months, when everyone seems to be growing up, getting serious, and Stiles doesn’t have any plans beyond “go to college, I guess,” and it’s hard not to wonder if anyone he’ll leave behind is going to miss him much.

Stiles excuses himself, ignores the worried look his father gives him, and trudges up to his room. He flops onto his bed and sighs. He’ll be glad to see Gran again, really, but the way he’s feeling lately, an entire week of her worried face and her input on his singleness is going to be excruciating.

It would be awesome if there were some way to get her to lay off on the topic, to be able to say “hey, look Gran, I’m not a total failure at human contact!” Ha, the easiest thing to do would be to find someone for just the next few weeks, but it’s not like you can just walk up to someone and -

Oh.

The idea that’s dropped into his mind is completely ridiculous, but... It could work, definitely, could make his life just that little bit easier. Given how much he has to deal with on a daily basis, he’ll take what he can get.

The only question is who to ask. The pool of candidates is pretty small, it’s kind of depressing. Lydia will say no, he’s completely sure. Asking Allison would be too weird, not to mention that Gran knows about her and Scott, and he absolutely refuses to ask any of the werewolves (although imagining Jackson’s face if he asked him makes him almost want to try). He is keeping his grandmother as far away from that shit as it is possible to get in Beacon Hills.

Which leaves -

*

“Danny!”

Danny sighs, closing his locker door and leaning back against it. He looks faintly exasperated already which is only slightly fair. “What is it, Stiles?”

“Uh, could we talk somewhere?” Stiles would rather not do this in the corridor, not least because it’s embarrassing as hell. Danny looks at him strangely, but shrugs and gestures for Stiles to lead the way.

Fortunately, the parking lot is nearly empty and Stiles leads them over to his Jeep.

“Okay this is going to sound really weird and possibly creepy but I need you to keep an open mind and not just say no without thinking about it,” he says all in one breath.

“Uh, okay?” Danny’s forehead wrinkles in confusion. It’s cute, which is kind of irrelevant, but Stiles can’t just not notice. His brain is a difficult thing to switch off.

“Will you pretend to be my boyfriend for three weeks?”

Danny stares at him. “This is one of your weird, am-I-attractive-to-gay-guys things isn’t it?” he says slowly.

“No, no, really it isn’t,” Stiles says hastily. “Look, it’s a long story, but basically my grandmother’s coming to town and it would make my life easier, and hers too probably, if she thinks I’m all...in love and stuff.”

“Okay, first of all that is kind of weird,” Danny says. “And secondly, this is the best solution you could come up with? You couldn’t just actually ask someone out?”

Stiles shrugs. “There isn’t actually anyone I want to date,” he says. Or anyone that wants to date him. “I figured faking it would be easier.”

Danny’s still looking at him like he’s crazy, which he should probably be used to by now.

“I don’t - Stiles, this is a really weird thing to ask me.”

“I know.”

“And shouldn’t you ask a girl?”

Stiles was kind of hoping Danny would overlook that part so he wouldn’t have to explain himself. “Well I’m not exactly, um, picky,” he says, blushing slightly. “I thought you knew that.”

Danny smirks. “I did, I just wasn’t sure you knew.”

“Hey!” Stiles protests, even though Danny has a point. “And anyway, there isn’t a girl I could ask. Lydia would say no - ”

“Yeah, she really would,” Danny interjects.

“ - and Allison’s with Scott, and Erica’s with Boyd, it’d be weird. Besides which, they all kind of scare me,” he adds.

Danny snorts, but follows it up with, “Yeah, me too,” so Stiles doesn’t take offense. “And your grandmother won’t care about the whole guy thing?” Danny adds.

“Nah,” Stiles says. “She’ll be cool with it.” He’s never actually discussed his sexuality with Gran, thank God, but he knows her thoughts on the issue and it won’t be a problem.

He widens his eyes beseechingly and clasps his hands together. “Please, Danny, I’m begging you. I know it’s weird but I don’t know who else to ask and it’ll be a huge help and I’ll even pay you if you - ”

“Fine, fine, I’ll do it,” Danny says, holding up his hand. “And you won’t pay me because that would be creepy.”

Stiles breathes a sigh of relief, not least because he has no idea where he’d get the money to pay him from. “You’re a prince amongst men, Danny,” he says, patting him on the arm.

“Yeah, yeah, save it,” Danny says. “What exactly is this going to entail?” he asks after a moment, suddenly looking wary about what he’s agreed to.

“Um, well, the only people we really need to fool are my dad and my gran,” he says. “I dunno, I guess I’ll tell my dad we’re dating and take it from there? You’ll probably have to come over a couple of times...” He hasn’t actually thought this far ahead. “We’ll make it up as we go along?” he finishes hopefully.

Danny buries his face in his hands. “This is never going to work.”

*

Stiles has never been so glad that he’s already had the I-sorta-like-dudes-too conversation with his dad, because it makes it a thousand times less awkward to sit down at the table that evening and say,

“So I’m dating Danny.”

The Sheriff raises an eyebrow at him. “Since when?” he asks. It’s a gratifyingly calm reaction.

“Um, this morning?” Stiles fiddles with his cutlery, not looking him in the eye. “It’s not a big deal, really, but we’re trying it out, I guess you could say, and - ”

“Stiles,” his dad interrupts before he can talk himself into a corner. “I’m happy for you, son. Danny’s a good kid.”

See this is why Danny was the perfect choice. He’s exactly the kind of person you can introduce to your parents (and grandparents) and know they’re going to approve. And it doesn’t hurt that he’s tall and good-looking and popular (enough so that Stiles suspects he’d have a harder time selling it to people at school that Danny would actually want to date him.)

“Thanks, dad,” he says quietly, eyes still on his plate. He hates lying to his father, but since his father is incapable of lying to Gran, it's necessary. Seriously, it borders on disturbing, she sees straight through him like he’s made out of glass.

Stiles will tell him the truth once it’s all over, and it’ll all be fine. After all, he’s kept (and is still keeping) worse secrets from him and everything worked out fine.

Well, fine might be stretching it a bit.

“I don’t need to give you a talk about safe - ” the Sheriff starts.

“Whoa, dad, no, thanks,” Stiles says, waving his hands and shaking his head vigorously. “We haven’t - we’re not - ”

“Alright, don’t have an aneurysm, I had to ask.” He looks just as relieved as Stiles does.

“Really, Dad? Did you really?” Stiles asks, making a face.

“I’m your father, it comes with the territory.”

“But we’ve already had two excruciatingly embarrassing conversations on the topic before,” he protests. They weren't actually that bad, honestly, but it's not really something he's eager to rehash.

“Yes, but they were just...general conversations. Now that you’re actually dating someone...” Thankfully, his father lets the sentence trail off.

“Okay, I get it, thanks,” Stiles says, grimacing. “Well we’re not...doing that and if we ever do, I know how to be...smart.”

“Good,” the Sheriff says gruffly.

They eat in slightly embarrassed silence for a couple of minutes until the Sheriff asks about lacrosse practice, and Stiles gratefully latches on to it and the rest of dinner is refreshingly normal.

*

Fake-dating Danny is for the most part exactly the same as not-fake-dating Danny, probably because they’re not actually trying to fool anyone at school. They see each other in class and at lacrosse practice and sit at the same table in the cafeteria most days. Ever since Derek had (fucking finally, in Stiles’s opinion) gotten his shit together enough to make his pack a, well, pack, they tend to gravitate towards each other in all situations, the de facto human members included.

Stiles remembers the day Danny found out about all this shit, remembers the insane, screaming argument about it he and Jackson had that the rest of them pretended not to watch, the one that ended in manly embracing (initiated by Danny) and tears (Jackson's) and would have made Stiles laugh if it wasn’t so fucking touching. Even Lydia had looked moved.

It’s the only time he’s ever actually seen Danny all-out lose it, be anything other than the affable, easy-going guy he’s known for years. It was of...hot to see him like that, tall and imposing and scary, squaring off with Jackson out the back of the Hale house. He’s always known, in a matter-of-fact kind of way that Danny’s good-looking, but that was one of those holy-shit-you’re-hot moments that Stiles sometimes remembers when he glances at him.

On Tuesday, Danny comes up to him after chemistry.

“Am I ever going to have to actually do anything as your fake boyfriend?” he asks as they head out of the classroom.

“Oh, right, I didn’t tell you the plan,” Stiles says. It probably doesn’t deserve the title of plan, given that he’d come up with it on the spot when his dad asked if he was ever planning to invite Danny over.“Can you come over on Saturday to hang out? There’s no reason for my dad to think I’m lying about this, except for how you’re way fucking out of my league, but I figure we might as well make an appearance just in case he gets suspicious at some point.”

Danny’s looking at him weirdly, a kind of squinty, half-confused expression. “Okay?” he says.

“What? Is there something wrong with that?” Stiles asks, frowning.

“No, it’s just - never mind,” he says, cutting himself off. “So, Saturday? What time?”

“Uh, like, mid-afternoon, maybe four? He’ll probably invite you to stay for dinner, if that’s okay.”

Danny shrugs. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

“Thanks, man, seriously, I owe you.”

They’re at Danny’s locker by this point, and Stiles stands there and watches as Danny spins the lock and starts to pull books out of his bag.

“So,” he says after a moment. “I’ll just...go then?”

“‘kay,” Danny says from behind the locker door. Something feels kind of strange and unsettled between them, but Stiles doesn’t know how to ask about it without making things weirder, so he just says goodbye and tries his best to shake the feeling off.

*

Scott’s reaction to Stiles’s explanation of the situation is to say, “Why are you fake dating Danny?” with his patented confused puppy-dog expression. Stiles huffs in exasperation.

“I just explained that to you! Because - ”

“No, I meant why aren’t you just actually dating him?”

Stiles gapes at him.

“Oh my god, did I actually stun you into silence?” Scott crows, laughing so raucously that he falls off the bed and it totally serves him right. So much for superhuman reflexes.

“Why would I actually date Danny?” Stiles manages to ask, feeling strangely hot, as Scott gets up and flops onto his desk chair.

“Because he’s a nice, good-looking guy and you like him?” Scott says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Well, yeah, of course I like him, I mean who doesn’t like Danny?” Stiles says, the words almost tripping over each other at how quickly they come out of his mouth. “And sure he’s good-looking but he’s not really my type and besides - ”

“Since when do you have a type?”

“Since forever!”

“Dude, Lydia doesn’t count as a type. She’s just a person.”

“Okay, but - ” Stiles starts.

“And sure everyone likes Danny, but I always thought you kinda...” He wiggles his fingers in a baffling gesture.

“Okay, first, I don’t want to know what this - ” he imitates Scott’s hand motion - “means. Ever. Second, where the hell did you get that idea?”

Scott shrugs in and irritatingly vague way of his. “I dunno, it was always kind of obvious.” He looks at his watch. “Hey dude, Allison’s gonna be over soon, so...”

Stiles groans. “Sure, kicking me out for Allison. You wound me, man.”

“Well if you want to stay and continue this conversation I can call Allison and - ”

“I’ll see you at school tomorrow!” Stiles calls over his shoulder on his way out the door.

Scott’s words leave him feeling off-balance as he drives home, unsettled in a way that he doesn’t really know what to do with. So he shifts up a gear, reminds himself that it’s only for another two and a bit weeks, and then everything will be back to normal.

It doesn’t really make him feel better.

*

“Seriously, I owe you one,” Stiles says as he shuts his front door behind Danny. It’s four in the afternoon and after a nervous thirty minutes of wondering if Danny was going to show, the doorbell finally rang.

“You need to stop saying that,” Danny says. His hands are stuck in his pockets and he has a half-smile on his face. “It makes me feel kinda like a hooker.”

Stiles almost chokes at that, which fortunately makes Danny laugh before Stiles can say something awkward. He regains his composure and rolls his eyes.

“Haha,” he says, deadpan, and leads the way into the living room. There’s an uncomfortable knot of nervousness in his stomach as he flops down on the couch and Danny sits down next to him. “So, uh, we could watch a movie? Or play Xbox or something?”

“A movie’s good, unless you’d rather I kick your ass at Call of Duty.”

“Pft, as if you could,” Stiles scoffs. “I’ll have you know I am a genius at that game.”

“Big talk,” Danny teases.

“Oh, it’s on,” Stiles says, sliding off the couch to turn on the console.

“I’m terrified,” Danny says sarcastically.

“You should be.”

“I play this with Jackson, if you think you’re half as scary as he is in crazy-competitive mode, you’re completely delusional.”

Stiles ponders this. “Fair point,” he says, handing Danny a controller and sitting back down.

It turns out Danny is a fucking savant, because after five minutes it’s abundantly clear Stiles is never going to be better than him.

“Don’t suppose you want to watch a movie after all?” he says after ten.

“Giving up so soon?” Danny says, giving him a sidelong smirk.

“Call it a tactical retreat,” he says, watching as Danny kills three enemies in rapid succession.

Danny laughs and tosses his controller on the coffee table. Okay, a movie it is,” he says. “I’ll even spare you my victory dance. You were only holding me back, anyway.”

“Hey! I take personal offense to that.” He nods towards the DVD cabinet. “What d’you wanna watch?”

They eventually decide on Kick-Ass and settle in to watch. Stiles has already seen it about six times, and his attention can't help but wander. The distance between them on the couch is just big enough that he wonders if they should be sitting closer together, but it's also small enough that Danny's proximity is distracting. He wonders if there's anything about what they're doing that they wouldn't do if they were just friends, and if maybe he's supposed to act differently.

To convince who, exactly, he's not sure, since his dad isn't around, and doesn't seem to be particularly in need of any convincing. But he can't shake the feeling that he's doing things wrong, and he misses the entire first half of the movie worrying about it.

When it gets too much and he can hardly hear the movie over the buzzing in his head, Stiles stands. “Soda?” he asks, heading for the kitchen and a temporary reprieve.

“Sure, thanks,” Danny replies, giving him a small smile before turning his attention back to the screen.

Stiles breathes a sigh of relief when he reaches the kitchen, resting his forehead against the fridge and trying not to groan. Scott’s stupid comment keeps popping into his head, and he can’t shake if off, can’t stop wondering if maybe -

“Stiles?”

Stiles starts and narrowly avoids bashing his head against the cupboard door. He turns to glare at his father. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“Everything okay, son?” the Sheriff asks, looking concerned.

“Apart from you just sneaking up on me, yeah, sure, why wouldn’t it be?” He tries to arrange his face in a neutral expression and lean against the fridge nonchalantly. His dad doesn’t look fooled for a second.

“Look, Stiles,” he begins, and sighs. “If you’re uncomfortable because I’m here...you know it’s fine, right? You can sit next to your boyfriend on the couch, I’m not going to get a shotgun.”

Which is good to know, but doesn't exactly help Stiles out of his particular dilemma.

“Awesome, thanks,” he says, a little more sarcastically than he meant to. “I’ll just...go then...” He grabs two sodas from the fridge and heads back into the living room. And apparently it's introduction time, because his father follows him. Great.

“Um, Danny, you’ve met my dad before, right?” he says, setting the drinks down on the table.

“Yeah, nice to see you again, Sheriff,” Danny says, and then he stands and shakes Stiles’s father’s hand like a real gentleman. Jesus.

“And you, Danny,” the Sheriff says, smiling. For some reason it makes Stiles incredibly nervous. Almost as if his dad really is meeting his boyfriend. To mask his sudden discomfort, he skirts around them and sits back down.

“How are your parents?” his dad asks, and oh god they’re going to make small talk and Stiles is going to sit here awkwardly and try not to freak out.

“They’re doing well, I’ll tell them you asked,” Danny says.

“I haven’t seen them since - ”

“Uh, dad?” Stiles says, and attempts a little father-son psychic communication, staring at him meaningfully.

“Okay, okay, I’m going,” the Sheriff says. “I guess I’ll be seeing you around here, Danny.”

Danny drops onto the couch next to Stiles, much, much closer than he was before, and casually slings his arm around the back of it, more or less around Stiles’s shoulders and he’s so fucking smooth Stiles almost laughs. Instead, he leans a little into Danny’s side.

“I hope so, Sheriff,” Danny says, and he sounds one hundred percent sincere.

The Sheriff shoots Stiles a look before he leaves, a small, approving smile that Stiles doesn't know how to respond to.

They watch the whole movie like that, Danny’s arm around Stiles’s shoulders, feet next to each other up on the coffee table. And after the first ten minutes, it stops feeling strange and just feels comfortable. For the first time all afternoon, Stiles gives up worrying about what's happening or what's meant to happen. He relaxes.

The movie's nearly over when the Sheriff comes back in and asks Danny if he’d like to stay for dinner. Danny accepts and they watch another movie and eat dinner in the living room and Stiles firmly resists thinking I could get used to this.

By the time Danny stands to leave, it’s nearly eleven and Stiles can’t believe how fast the day’s gone. He walks Danny to the door and hopes to God his father isn’t going to spy on them.

“Thanks,” is all he says once the front door’s closed behind them.

“No problem, I had fun,” Danny says with a small shrug and a smile.

“So, um, you probably don’t need to come over again before my grandma’s here...” Except Stiles kind of wants him to, because tonight was (mostly) fun in a totally normal, human way that Stiles misses.

“Okay, cool,” Danny says, his car keys jangling in his hands. “I’ll just - ”

“Unless you want to come over on, like, Wednesday?” Stiles blurts out. “Because we have that chem quiz on Friday and I could definitely use help studying for it, it doesn't have to be a big deal...” he trails off hopefully.

“Yeah, sounds good,” Danny says without hesitation. “I study better with someone else anyway.”

“Awesome,” Stiles says, grinning harder than the situation warrants.

“Cool, so...bye, then,” Danny says, hesitating slightly, his eyes flicking over Stiles’s shoulder to the window, like he’s wondering if the Sheriff’s watching them.

“Bye,” Stiles says and for one crazy second they’re staring at each other and he thinks oh god, he’s going to kiss me, but then the moment breaks, and Danny turns to go, giving Stiles a small wave over his shoulder as he walks down the drive.

Stiles absolutely doesn’t look at his ass as he walks away.

*

“This is all your fault,” Stiles announces from where he’s spread-eagled on Scott’s bed.

“What?” Scott says, looking up from his computer with a hurt expression.

“Danny.”

Scott’s hurt expression instantly turns smug. “So I was right?”

“No,” Stiles says automatically, and then pauses. “Maybe. Not exactly. But since you mentioned it I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“I assume “it” means having sex with Danny?”

“Well it didn’t until now,” Stiles wails, rolling over and trying to smother himself with Scott’s comforter. “It was mostly just freaking out about maybe actually liking him and wanting to really date him but oh, great, now I’m definitely thinking about having sex with him.”

“Can you do that when you’re not on my bed?” Scott asks plaintively, like Stiles hasn’t endured much worse from him and Allison. Stiles sits up and glares at him.

“You’re my best friend, you’re supposed to make me feel better,” he whines. “Instead, every time I see you you end up giving me these really unfortunate revelations about myself.”

“So what happened? Did you see him yesterday?” Scott asks. He shuts his computer and bounces onto the bed next to Stiles.

“Are we really going to sit around and talk about my feelings?” Stiles asks, burying his face in his hands.

“Yes,” Scott says emphatically. “Anyway, you're the one who brought it up.”

“Fine, shit,” Stiles sighs. “He came over on Saturday and we like...cuddled while we watched a movie, it was super, epically gay.”

“And you liked it.”

“Yes, yes, I did, okay? And he’s coming over on Wednesday to study chemistry and so on top of this little crisis I’m having, I’m going to fail chemistry because how the hell am I supposed to study with Danny in my bedroom.”

Scott stares at him, eyes slightly wide. “Dude,” he says. “You really need to sleep with him.”

Stiles pushes him off the bed.

*

As if Stiles weren’t already feeling nervous and awkward enough, his dad calls out “door open, Stiles!” as he leads Danny up the stairs and god, that’s putting things in his head he really needs to not think about right now.

“Sorry about him,” he says, pushing open the door to his room. Danny shrugs.

“He’s your father and you have your boyfriend in your room, it’s pretty much expected.”

Stiles’s brain catches on the word boyfriend. “Ha, yeah,” he says weakly.

They spread their books on Stiles’s desk and Stiles drags his extra chair over. “It’s topics one through four, right?” he asks, thumbing through his textbook, trying not to think about how close together they’re sitting.

For a while they just study, and the familiarity of it calms Stiles down. Regardless of whatever else he might be feeling, he likes being friends with Danny, likes that they’ve gotten closer this year, since all the shit with the alpha pack went down and Danny found out everything.

They quiz each other for a while, then study the material again and re-test each other, and after about an hour, Stiles’s concentration is totally maxed out. He starts chewing absently on the end of his pen, mind wandering away from thermodynamics, and he taps out a rhythm on his desk, feeling itchy and bored.

It takes a couple of moments to realize what he’s doing, and when he shoots a glance over at Danny he’s just staring at him, not straight on, but definitely watching Stiles out of the corner of his eye and paying zero attention to his books.

Stiles blushes, he can feel it.

“Oh, uh, sorry, I’ll stop,” he says, stilling his fingers and awkwardly removing the pen from his mouth.

“Break time?” Danny suggests, leaning back in his chair. “I could use one.”

“God, yes, please,” Stiles groans, and he pushes his chair away from the desk and rolls a few feet back. Danny raises his arms above his head and stretches, his t-shirt pulling tight across his shoulders, riding up so a strip of skin is visible between his shirt and waistband. Stiles can't help but stare.

Something he's been wanting to ask Danny for a while occurs to him.

“Hey, can I ask you a question?”

Danny looks slightly wary (which is totally understandable), but nods.

“When you found out about all the...stuff,” he starts hesitantly, because they've never actually talked about any this before, “with Derek and Jackson and Scott... What’d you think?”

Danny doesn’t answer right away, he looks down and frowns, like he’s remembering not-very-pleasant things.

“Well, obviously, at first I didn’t believe it,” he says eventually. “Werewolves? It sounded fucking ridiculous.”

Stiles snorts. “No argument here.”

“But then, when Jackson actually told me everything and, well, showed me... I was angry.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Stiles says, grinning.

Danny looks a little embarrassed. “Not my best moment,” he says, biting his lip. It’s fucking adorable.

“Nah, seems like a totally valid reaction to me,” Stiles assures him.

“I think I was just pissed he didn’t tell me, that he didn’t trust me with it, y’know? And that he was into all this dangerous shit and, huh, I guess I was scared?” He sounds like he’s working it out as he talks.

Not for the first time, Stiles wonders about Danny and Jackson, and if there’s ever been anything between them. Sure, Jackson and Lydia are more or less inseparable these days, but it wasn’t always that way.

“Did you ever - I mean, did you and Jackson ever - ” He can't think of a not-awkward way to phrase it, but Danny clearly doesn't need the end of the sentence to know what he's getting at.

“Oh my god, why does everyone think I have a thing for Jackson?” he asks, groaning. “Even Jackson does sometimes, honestly, what’s the deal with that?”

“It’s just...well, he’s pretty, you know, hot,” and boy, Stiles hopes that comment doesn’t get back to Jackson, “and the two of you are close, so it’s kind of natural to...wonder...”

“Well, for the record, no, me and Jackson have never anything, and I’ve never wanted to.”

Stiles holds up his hands. “Okay, I was just curious,” he says, believing him about ninety-eight percent, because he can't quite believe Danny's never had a single wayward thought about Jackson.

“Yeah, you and absolutely everyone else,” Danny mutters under his breath, but he doesn’t look annoyed, more comically aggrieved.

“Well, since the first time you heard about all this shit,” Stiles says, returning to the topic, “you’ve taken it pretty well.”

He has – he doesn't show up at Derek's house much, but he seems to have accepted everything about the situation with equanimity, and he hangs out with them at lunch and after lacrosse practice and doesn't seem bothered by any of the weird stuff that tends to happen when they're all together.

“It’s still hard to wrap my head around sometimes, though,” Danny replies and yeah, Stiles still feels like that sometimes. “You ever wish things were just normal?” Danny asks, looking at him curiously.

“Sometimes, I guess,” Stiles says. He tries not to think about it too often, to be honest. “Things would be easier. Fewer people would have gotten hurt,” he adds quietly.

“Yeah,” Danny agrees, looking down, and Stiles knows he's thinking about Jackson basically dying in front of him.

“Shit, sorry, this is a depressing conversation,” Stiles says after a moment of silence.

“No, it’s - well, yeah, it kinda is, but it’s...nice to actually talk about this for once.”

And he’s right it is, it’s nice to talk to someone who’s in more or less the same situation he is, even if they’ve had less time to adjust.

“Maybe we should more often,” he says with a wry smile. “We should have our own little club, get Lydia to join us maybe. We could get t-shirts made. Humans In A Werewolf World. HIAWW. It has a nice ring to it.”

“No, it really doesn’t,” Danny says, laughing. He’s a fucking miracle when he smiles like that, and Stiles is so, so screwed.

*

“What are the chances,” Stiles asks, spinning around in his desk chair, “that there will be absolutely no werewolf-related drama next week?”

“Hmm?” Scott mumbles, barely looking up from his book.

“You and your little furry buddies gonna be stirring up trouble at any point in the next seven days?” Stiles kicks Scott’s foot to get his attention.

“What? No,” Scott says, looking up. “We don’t stir up trouble.”

Stiles snorts. “Yeah, okay, it just finds you with freakish accuracy.”

“Yeah, yeah. I dunno what’s going on, I’ve been busy this week. There’s supposed to be a pack meeting on Friday, you can ask Derek then.”

“Oh, great, that’ll be fun,” Stiles mutters.

“What’s happening next week anyway?” Scott asks and Stiles rolls his eyes.

“Gran’s going to be here, didn’t I already tell you this multiple times?” Scott lights up as soon as Stiles says it. Scott completely adores Stiles’s grandmother and the feeling is mutual, seriously, one day Gran is going to put in an official request to have Scott as a grandson instead.

“Awesome!” Scott says happily.

“Yeah, so come over as much as you want,” Stiles says. “Just...leave the claws at home?”

*

“C’mon, I’m begging you Derek, just lay low for a week, okay?”

Derek eyes him dubiously. “What’s the big deal with next week?” he asks.

“My grandmother’s going to be in town and I’d like all this crazy shit to stay as far away from her as possible, okay? She’s paying for my college tuition and I don’t want her to decide the money would be better spent getting me committed to the psych ward.”

Derek looks slightly offended by that statement.

“Look, Stiles, it’s not like any of us go looking for trouble - ” he starts, but Stiles cuts him off.

“Oh my god that’s exactly what Scott said, I hate it when you guys agree on stuff, it freaks me out. Look, I know you don’t go looking for it but just...please at least try to avoid trouble. You could take everyone on vacation or something,” he suggests. The vision of Derek, Jackson, Erica, Boyd and Isaac packed into Derek’s Camaro is too fucking funny to pass up. “You could take a road trip, I hear Washington’s nice this time of year.”

Derek actually blanches at the thought, which makes Stiles want to laugh his head off. “I can’t promise anything,” Derek says, “but we’ll lay low, okay?” The last word is gritted out like it’s paining him to make this concession. Stiles pats him on the arm, and then briefly wonders when their relationship progressed to the point where he could do that without fearing Derek would then rip it off.

“That’s all I’m asking,” he says. “Oh, wait, no it’s not; if something does come up can you please, for the love of God, leave me out of it.”

“I’ll only call you in an emergency,” Derek agrees, which isn’t quite what Stiles said, but is probably the best he could hope for.

“Thank you,” he says, and Derek looks slightly surprised by his sincerity.

"No problem,” he replies gruffly, his lips quirking in what on anyone else Stiles would swear was a half-smile.

*

“So here’s the plan,” Stiles says into the phone on Saturday. “You’re coming over for dinner on Monday, most likely.”

There’s a long pause on the other end. “Is that the whole plan?” Danny asks.

“Shut up, it’s elegant in its simplicity,” Stiles says. “Gran’ll definitely want to meet you, and I figure the sooner the better before she starts believing you don’t exist.”

“Well, okay. Do we have a backstory?”

Stiles drops the action figure he was fiddling with. “A what?”

“You know, like a story about how we started dating? Seems like the kind of thing she’d want to know, if she’s as invested in this as you say she is.”

“Huh, I hadn’t thought about it,” Stiles muses. “You’re a freaking life saver, you know that?”

Danny huffs a laugh. “So do you need me to come up with one?”

“Uh, well, if you already have something in mind, hit me with it. Doesn’t have to be that complicated, right?”

“Nah,” Danny says. He pauses for a moment. “Okay, how about, we’ve known each other for ages, have a bunch of the same friends, blah blah blah, we started hanging out a lot more this year, you realized the reason you constantly ask me if I’m attracted to you is because you were attracted to me, and then you asked me out and I said yes.”

“Yeah, okay, that sounds...plausible,” Stiles says faintly. Completely fucking accurate, more like.

“Cool, I’ll see you on Monday then.”

Stiles drops the phone onto his desk and resists the temptation to bash his head against it. It’s getting out of hand, this whole thing, entirely because he can’t stop thinking about how amazing Danny’s hands look. Fuck.

He just needs to get through this week and then he can figure everything else out.

Yes.

It’s a good plan.

*

Stiles waits impatiently in the living room for his father to arrive back from picking up Gran. He tries playing video games, watching TV, he even re-cleans the kitchen.

He’s not entirely sure why he’s so nervous. He loves his grandmother, and she loves him, and he really is looking forward to seeing her. It’s been two years since she last visited. She can be a little overwhelming, sure, and she’s far too sharp for Stiles to be completely comfortable around her, especially given how many secrets he has these days. He can't shake the feeling that something's going to go wrong, even if he can't tell what.

In a last ditch attempt to distract himself, he pulls out his phone.

To: Danny
6:23 pm
gran should be here any
min and i’m freaking out
here dude. you don’t happen
to know any relaxation
techniques do you?

He gets a reply quickly.

From: Danny
6:27 pm
how scary can she be??
should i be worried? also
try breathing deeply.

To: Danny
6:32 pm
she’s not scary but she's
pretty sharp but also really
great I DON’T KNOW WHY
I’M FREAKING OUT. and
she’ll love you trust me.

To: Danny
6:33 pm
also, tried breathing deeply,
almost passed out, are you
trying to kill me

From: Danny
6:37 pm
i didn’t say hyperventilate,
jesus stiles. Maybe you’re
just excited and mistaking
your nerves for panic idk

To: Danny
6:39 pm
hmmm maybe. isn’t alcohol
supposed to calm people down,
i should have a shot of
whiskey

From: Danny
6:40 pm
ON NO ACCOUNT SHOULD
YOU HAVE WHISKEY OR ANY
ALCOHOL AT ALL

Stiles is laughing so hard at that that he misses the sound of his dad’s car pulling into the drive. The sound of the front door opening startles him, and then his father calls out “Stiles? We’re here,” and he rushes into the hall.

He’s immediately pulled into a close, tight hug that smells faintly of lavender, and he squeezes right back, unable to stop the grin that breaks out across his face. He never really realizes how much he’s missed her until she hugs him like this. After a few seconds, his grandmother pushes him back by the shoulders.

“Alright,” she says. “Let me look at you.”

Sharp green eyes examine him closely and he tries not to squirm.

“I’m not that different to the last time you saw me,” he protests, flushing slightly under the scrutiny. She laughs and pets his cheek.

“All grown up,” she says with a smile that almost breaks his heart with how familiar it is. He sweeps her up into another hug.

“It’s good to see you again, Gran,” he whispers, and she pulls back and kisses his forehead.

“And you, baby,” she replies tenderly. “You need to quit it with the growing thing, though, you’re going to be as tall as your father soon.”

Stiles snorts. “Yeah, I wish.” He looks at her long and hard and wonders why he was ever apprehensive about her visiting.

It doesn’t take long to get her settled in the guest room, and then Stiles leads the way back downstairs for dinner.

“So,” Gran starts as soon as they’re all seated. “Tell me everything that’s going on with you, Stiles. Your emails are so vague.”

They have to be, given that at least fifty percent of his time is spent running around with werewolves and trying not to get killed.

“Um,” he starts, moving the food around on his plate. “Well, school’s okay, although I guess it’s starting to get pretty hard. I've been looking at colleges a little, but I haven't really decided anything yet.”

They talk about college for a little while, even though applications are still a year off, and Gran offers him plenty of advice on which schools are best for what and hints that San Francisco State would be a great choice.

“Real subtle, Gran,” he says with a smile.

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” she says innocently, but breaks into a smile, too. “You know I want you to go wherever you want,” she adds, and he nods. “Anyway, enough college talk. How’s Scott? Is he still seeing the lovely Allison that you told me about?”

“Oh, yeah, they’re still together. They’ve broken up a couple of times, but they’re pretty solid now.”

And he knows what’s coming next and it’s a nice change not to cringe away from the question.

“And how about you, baby? Anyone special in your life?” She’s smiling so kindly, and Stiles knows that she worries about him so much, it’s actually such a relief to be able to say,

“Well...there is actually.” He doesn’t have to fake the slightly embarrassed smile.

Gran looks delighted, like he knew she would, a soft, happy smile on her face. “Oh, I’m so glad to hear it,” she says, and then takes on a faintly chastising look. “You couldn’t have mentioned this in one of your emails?”

“It's pretty recent,” Stiles says, not completely untruthfully. “I wasn’t sure how it was going to work out, I didn’t want to mention it til I was sure...”

“Well?” Gran says, looking expectant. “Who’s the lucky lady?”

“Actually he’s called Danny,” he says, and to her credit Gran doesn’t even blink. “He’s in my grade, we play on the lacrosse team together.”

“Lacrosse, hmm? Knew you’d go for the athletic type,” she says with a wink.

“Gran!” Stiles exclaims, slightly scandalized.

“Oh, don’t be a prude,” she replies, and Stiles's father, who has been quiet up until this point, snorts into his food. Gran shoots him a look.

“Don’t get too comfortable over there, I’m going to be asking about the lovely Melissa next,” she says, and it’s Stiles’s turn to choke back a laugh. His dad looks alarmed, and oh, Stiles is definitely sticking around for that conversation.

“So when is this Danny coming over for me to meet him?” Gran says, turning back to Stiles.

“I thought he could come over for dinner on Monday? I knew you’d want to meet him, so I already asked him, he said he’d love to.”

“Excellent,” Gran says, beaming. Stiles crosses his fingers that she’ll be content for now and will wait to actually meet Danny in person rather than make Stiles tell her every little detail about him. He’s rewarded when she turns her attention to his father.

“Now,” she begins. “About Melissa...”

When he finally goes upstairs for the night, Stiles checks his phone again and finds four messages from Danny.

From: Danny
6:59 pm
please tell me you didn’t
actually steal your dad’s
whiskey

From: Danny
7:09 pm
if you did and are now
drunk i totally disclaim all
responsibility

From: Danny
8:23 pm
okay i’m assuming your gran
arrived and everything’s fine
or that you got so drunk you
passed out

From: Danny
8:47 pm
text me when you’re sober
again

Stiles laughs and quickly taps out a reply.

To: Danny
10:32 pm
i’m not drunk but if i was it
would totally be your fault.
all good, dinner was fine, gran
v eager to meet you. talk
to you monday?

From: Danny
11:17 pm
good to know you’re alive. i’ll
make sure i wear a nice shirt
to dinner
gnight :)

Stiles stares at the screen and tries to fathom whether there’s some deep meaning behind the emoticon, since Danny doesn’t generally use them.

Oh my god Stiles, it’s just a smiley face, get a grip, he thinks, and quickly taps out goodnight :) and hits send before he can think about it any more.

Scott comes over on Sunday, and Gran coos over him as usual, making him tell her everything that’s happened to him in the time since she last saw him. Stiles sits on the kitchen counter and tries not to laugh as Scott gives her the highly-edited version of the last two years. Scott’s not the best liar in the world, he’s too earnest for it, but Stiles papers over the cracks in his stories as best he can, and Gran doesn’t seem to think anything’s amiss.

As Scott leaves, Gran insists that he and his mom come over for dinner while she’s here, such a blatant attempt at matchmaking that even Scott sees through it. He and Stiles have an unspoken pact not to talk about their parents and dating in the same sentence, but that doesn’t stop him widening his eyes at Stiles over Gran's as he tries to hold back a laugh. Stiles just rolls his in returns and shrugs his shoulders.

Grandparents, man, he tries to communicate. What can you do.

“Such a nice kid,” Gran muses once Scott's gone. Stiles grins at her.

“Sure you don't want to exchange us?”

She cuffs him lightly around the head, then pulls him into a hug.

“Never,” she says.

*

Monday morning, Scott turns up to school with a gash on his cheek and bruises on his knuckles.

“Oh my god, what the hell happened to you?” Stiles hisses, dragging Scott into an empty classroom. Scott doesn’t look all that phased, and just shrugs.

“We got into it with some wolves from Trinity last night.”

“We?” Stiles demands.

“Me, Derek, Jackson and Boyd. It wasn’t a big deal, but there were more of them, that’s why the - ” He gestures to his face.

“No big deal?” Stiles says incredulously. “You look terrible! And what do you mean ‘got into it’? I thought you guys were supposed to be laying low?”

“Hey, they came into our territory, and they were causing trouble. Derek waited until the last minute to go after them, and he made the others stay back.”

Stiles is slightly mollified, but it makes him feel anxious and slightly sick to imagine them all out getting into trouble while he was sitting at home, oblivious.

“How’s everyone else?” he asks. Scott doesn’t look too worried, and he tries to let that calm him, even though it’s kind of weird for Scott to be so laid back about this.

“Jackson has a cut on his arm, but everyone else is fine.” Stiles mustn’t look convinced, because Scott rolls his eyes. “Seriously, Stiles, stop worrying about it, we’re all fine.”

Stiles bites his lip, but doesn’t say anything.

“We’re not gonna bug you this week, Derek’s taking what you said seriously, okay?”

Which, apart from the idea of Derek actually listening to him, doesn't make him feel that much better.

“Okay,” he says with a sigh. “Just...don’t get killed.”

“I never do,” Scott says, grinning, and Stiles has to give that one to him.

*

Danny shows up at six exactly, and he’s wearing a blue button down shirt that makes Stiles’s mouth go dry.

“I’m not late am I?” Danny looks kind of nervous, his fingers playing with the front of his shirt.

“Nope, right on time,” Stiles says, tugging Danny into the house by his forearm. Which leaves them standing in the entranceway staring at each other, with his arm resting on Danny’s (nice, firm) arm. He snatches his hand away. “Just...be you, it’ll all be fine. And, seriously - ”

“What did I say about thanking me?” Danny says, lips turning up just a fraction.

“Okay, okay, I won’t.” Stiles holds up his hands. “C’mon,” he says, and leads Danny into the living room. He actually feels just as nervous as Danny looked, and for a second he wonders if he'd feel more or less nervous if this were actually real.

Gran’s sitting in an armchair, reading, when they enter the room, but she looks up right away. Stiles gestures Danny over to her.

“Gran, this is Danny, Danny, this is my grandmother,” Stiles says. Danny holds out his hand, but Gran ignores it, swooping in to pull him down and kiss his cheek. Stiles wants to bury his face in his hands.

“Um, sorry about that, she’s very affectionate,” he says to Danny, who doesn’t look all that bothered. On the contrary, in fact, he’s smiling.

“Oh, don’t apologize for me, Stiles,” Gran chides him. “I’m a grown-ass woman, I’ll do what I like.”

Danny lets out a surprised snort of laughter and Stiles can’t help but join him.

“It’s really nice to meet you,” Danny says. “I’ve, uh, heard a lot about you.”

“Awful, terrible things, no doubt,” Gran replies, winking at Stiles. “I can’t say I’ve heard much about you, son,” she adds and Stiles’s heart rate speeds up.

“Oh, well, Stiles and I only just started dating,” and Stiles notices the way Danny ducks his head and blushes a little when he says it. Jesus, he’s good at this. “I’m sure he was just waiting to be sure.”

Gran fixes him with her eagle eye. “That’s exactly what he said,” she says. She takes a step back and blatantly looks Danny over. “Well, you’re very good-looking aren’t you?”

“Gran!” Stiles squeaks. Oh god, he’s not sure he’s going to be able to look Danny in the eye after this. Gran laughs.

“I’m just giving you a hard time, baby,” she says, patting his cheek. “I’ll behave now, I promise.”

Thankfully, his dad chooses that moment to announce that dinner’s ready. Not so thankfully, once they’re all seated, the third degree that Stiles has been waiting for begins.

“So what do your parents do?” Gran asks before they've even taken a bit.

“My mom’s a lawyer, my dad owns an IT company,” Danny says. It dawns on Stiles that he doesn’t actually know this, that he doesn’t really know that much about Danny’s life outside of school. “They both work a lot.” It's impossible to tell from his expression how Danny feels about that, but Stiles suddenly wants to know. He keeps his mouth shut.

“Any siblings?”

“One older sister. She’s at college in New York.”

“So far away? What's she studying?”

“She's doing Graphic Design at Parsons,” Danny says, and while the school's name sounds vaguely familiar to Stiles, Gran clearly knows it.

“Impressive,” she says, and Danny grins and looks more than a little proud.

“Yeah, she's pretty amazing,” he says.

Stiles drinks in all this new information about Danny and tries to look like none of it is a surprise. He wonders why he's never thought to ask any of it before.

Gran and Danny have clearly taken to each other, because the rest of the conversation flows completely naturally, and they banter back and forth like old friends, discussing Danny's college plans, then what books they've both read, and then even a little politics. Stiles and his father are mostly spectators, occasionally exchanging amused, if slightly surprised, glances.

Eventually, of course, she works her way around to the topic of Danny-and-Stiles.

“So how long have you two been seeing each other?” she asks. Everyone’s finished eating, and Stiles is slumped in his chair feeling pleasantly full and surprisingly content. He laughs.

“You say ‘seeing each other’ like we’re actual adults, Gran. I’ve seen Danny basically every day at school since eighth grade.”

“Oh, you know what I meant,” she chastises.

“Well, we started dating like two weeks ago,” Stiles says, sitting up a little straighter, and Danny casually slings his arm around the back of Stiles’s chair.

“Oh? Just out of the blue?”

“I’m not going to give you all the embarrassing details, Gran,” Stiles says, trying to look stern in the face of her twinkling eyes.

“Then I’ll just have to get them from you,” she says, turning to Danny, who laughs.

“There’s not anything embarrassing to tell, really,” he replies, glancing over at Stiles. “We have a lot of the same friends, and we started hanging out more this year. I figured out that Stiles constantly asking me if I was attracted to him was him trying to be subtle - ”

“Hey!” Stiles interjects.

“ - and then we started dating,” Danny concludes with a small shrug.

“Yeah, see, not embarrassing at all,” Stiles mutters, but he shifts a little closer to Danny, who gives him soft smile that makes his stomach flip over weirdly. He can't help but smile back and they get kind of...stuck, just looking at each other. Stiles’s heart starts to race and he has no idea what’s happening except that he can’t really look away and -

The scrape of a chair against the floor snaps him out of it, and he turns to see his father standing up and starting to collect the dishes.

“Let me give you a hand, Sheriff,” Danny says, standing too, and moving into the kitchen. Which leaves Stiles alone with his grandmother at the table, and she’s looking at him with a soft eyes.

“He’s lovely,” she says, leaning in to whisper across the table. “And I can see how much you like him.”

“I - ” Stiles starts, and looks down. “He is,” he says after a moment. He closes his eyes briefly. “And I do.”

Oh god, he really does, he really, really likes Danny, he was stupid not to see it from the beginning. He's been avoiding the issue as best he can since Scott first made him doubt himself, pushing away the persistent thoughts, but what the hell is he supposed to do with all these stupid feelings suddenly bubbling up in his chest, the want that he can feel like a physical weight?

“Good,” Gran says. “I’m happy for you, baby.”

“Thanks, Gran,” he says, and then fumbles his phone out of his pocket and touches the screen at random. “I, uh, need to just,” he trails off and gestures to it, before standing and making a hasty exit. It's not a very convincing fake-out, but he needs some fresh air to deal with the moment of total clarity he’s having.

The front porch seems like the best option, and he sits on the stairs, the cool night air a pleasant contrast to his flushed face. Jesus, this was such a fucking terrible idea. He should have taken Scott seriously from the beginning.

Stiles enjoys five minutes of a low-grade freakout before the front door opens and someone sits down next to him on the step.

“Hey, you okay?” It’s Danny, of course, looking concerned.

“What, me, yeah I’m fine, totally fine,” Stiles babbles unconvincingly. Danny’s right next to him, if he were any closer they’d be pressed against each other. It's not the kind of thing calculated to calm him down.

“If you say so,” Danny says.

They sit in silence for a while, Stiles’s thoughts beating loud and clear in his head, Danny, warm, close, Armani, touch, touch touch, until Danny speaks.

“Can I ask you something?” he asks tentatively. Soft as his voice is, Stiles starts as it cuts through the noise in his mind.

“Sure, what?” he asks, looking at Danny in surprise.

“Is she your dad’s mom or your...your mom’s mom?” He looks like he’s not sure he’s allowed to ask the question, like he’s afraid of Stiles’s reaction. It abruptly derails Stiles's previous thoughts, and he looks down at his hands.

“My mom’s mom,” he says quietly. Danny doesn’t say anything, and after a moment Stiles continues. “She worries about me. A lot. Ever since...ever since mom died. I think,” Stiles pauses, and swallows. “I think she worries that I’m not good at making friends. At letting people close. That I’m lonely.”

Danny moves a little closer, and now their thighs are touching and he can feel all of Danny’s body heat. And rather that it freaking him out, it's comforting.

“Are you?” he asks, looking at his knees rather than facing Stiles.

Stiles shrugs. “No. Not really. I don’t know.” How did they end up talking about this, Christ. One look at even some of Stiles’s emotional baggage is going to send Danny running for the hills and totally remove any real chance Stiles ever had with him. Awesome.

“You’ve got the pack,” Danny says, glancing sidelong at him. “But I imagine there’s not a lot of time for sitting around having heart-to-hearts.”

“Dude, you’ve seen us. It’s a freaking circus.” Stiles looks at him curiously, glad to deflect the conversation. “You get that you’re a part of it, right?”

Danny looks up at him properly now, frowning slightly. “Part of what?”

“Pack. You are. It’s not really something you choose, exactly, it just...happens. And you’re a part of it. You’re...Jackson’s, and that makes you pack.”

Danny looks surprised, and then pleased, and then slightly offended. “I’m Jackson’s?” he asks, nose wrinkling. Stiles chuckles and feels some of the tension in his shoulders ease.

“Yeah, sorry dude.” He pats Danny companionably on the thigh. “And you’re friends with Lydia, and Isaac, and Scott, and, well, me. We all think of you as part of us.”

He wants Danny to get it, because he doesn’t think he has yet, even though he hangs around with them at school and sometimes out of it, there’s a hint of uncertainty to him that Stiles wants to do away with completely.

“Huh,” Danny says thoughtfully.

“You gotta come over to Derek’s again sometime,” Stiles continues. “After a full moon, they do this weird puppy pile thing, it’s beyond funny. And adorable. You’ll never take Jackson seriously again.”

“Who says I do right now?” Danny asks, grinning, and then they’re both laughing and Stiles belatedly realizes his hand is still on Danny’s thigh, and they’re awfully close together and oh god, Danny’s dimples. He snatches his hand away for the second time this evening.

“I should probably go,” Danny says, once they’ve quietened. “I already said goodbye to your grandmother. She said I was lovely,” he adds, looking oddly pleased.

“Told you she’d love you,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

“Uh huh,” Danny says. He stands up and Stiles follows him, and they stand there and look at each other for a moment and it's starting to feel awfully familiar when there’s a tap at the window behind them, and Stiles whips around to see Gran waving at them, or rather Danny, through the glass.

He turns back into something soft, and it takes a moment for him to realize those are Danny’s lips, Danny’s kissing him, and before he can work out what’s happening (or how to get it to continue doing so), Danny pulls away.

“Wouldn’t want to disappoint her,” he says, glancing over Stiles’s shoulder, and the twist of disappointment in Stiles’s gut says of course that’s all it was.

“No, yeah, sure, good thinking,” Stiles says weakly. Danny smiles at him, squeezes his arm, and then heads off to his car.

Stiles’s lips are still tingling.

*

Except for the fact that Scott’s injuries don’t fade, the rest of the week is as normal as any Stiles has ever had. When he asks Scott about them again, Scott shrugs off his question and Stiles finally decides to just let it go.

He goes to school and practice, and tries not to think about Danny kissing him. It’s nice having Gran at home, it even makes his dad’s expression less permanently pinched. They eat dinner as a family, Gran kicks their asses at poker afterwards, and it’s all so...normal and happy that Stiles should have known something bad was just waiting to happen.

*

His phone rings at the dinner table on Friday.

“Oh, sh - sorry,” he corrects, although Gran probably wouldn’t care too much about his swearing. He fumbles it out of his pocket and sets it to silent, then places it on the table.

“It’s fine, Stiles, you can take the call,” Gran says, but he shakes his head.

“Nah, it’s fine, if it’s important they’ll call back later.”

His phone vibrates, buzzing loudly against the table. Gran raises her eyes.

“If you want to talk to your boyfriend, go ahead, far be it from me to stand in the way of young love.”

Stiles laughs awkwardly and shoves all thoughts of Danny as far away as he can, just like he's been doing all week. He hasn't avoided him, exactly, he's friendly and chatty when they see each other in class and at lunch, but he hasn't texted him, or invited him over, or let himself think about him for more than five minutes at a time. He did end up inadvertently staring at his bare chest in the locker room, only looking away when Scott hissed “Your mouth is open,” in his ear, but that was one time and Danny really needs to learn to put his fucking shirt on.

When his phone buzzes again, five minutes later, a shorter one this time indicating a text message, Stiles sheepishly flips it over and looks at it.

3 missed calls
big bad

1 new message
big bad

Something between dread and resignation settles in his stomach as he opens the message.

From: big bad
7:46 pm
SOS

Shit.

“Um, I just have to make a call,” Stiles says sheepishly. “I’ll be right back,” he promises.

He hurries out of the dining room, through the kitchen and out the back door, all the while listening to Derek’s phone ring on the other end. He hops down off the porch, the adrenaline already making his legs shake, and then a hand comes out of nowhere and snatches him around the corner, out of sight of anyone who looks out the back door.

It’s Derek. Of fucking course it is, who else manhandles people with no apparent provocation.

“Jesus, Derek, you couldn’t just ask nicely?” Stile complains, shaking out of his grip. Derek, to his surprise, doesn’t even scowl at him for that. In fact, he looks serious, like scary, there-is-bad-shit-going-down serious.

“I know I said I’d leave you out of it this week unless it was an emergency,” Derek says. “Well, it is.”

“Is everyone - ”

“Everyone’s fine, for now,” Derek interrupts. “And I don’t need you to do anything, I just need you to shut up and listen to me.”

Stiles knows when not to push Derek, and just nods.

“There’s a vampire pack in town.”

“Vampires?!” Stiles hisses, eyes widening. Then he pauses. “Vampires have packs?”

Derek gives him a glare. “Not exactly, but it’s the closest analogy I could come up with. You really wanna discuss vampire group dynamics now?”

“Hey, I was just curious, go on with your story.” Stiles crosses his arms.

“They’ve been lurking around Beacon Hills for a week now - ”

“A week?!”

“Stop interrupting me. We had one run-in with a couple of them before, and we thought we scared them off. But apparently there are more of them than we anticipated, and they’re looking to make a move.”

“Am I allowed to talk now?”

Derek huffs and frowns, but gestures for Stiles to go ahead.

“First of all, why the hell am I only finding out about this now?” Stiles says, trying not to sound hysterical.

“I thought the situation was under control,” Derek says, sounding frustrated. “I was trying to do what you asked.”

Something pings in Stiles’s memory.

“Scott’s injuries,” he says slowly. “And Jackson’s. That was the vamps?”

Derek nods tightly. “That’s why they didn’t heal as quickly as they should.” He looks murderous.

“Shit,” Stiles says. He can tell Derek is extremely on-edge right now, he can practically feel the tension thrumming off his body. Derek takes the protection of his pack very, very seriously.

“Was there a second thing?”

“What?” Stiles asks, confused.

“You said ‘first of all’, usually that means you have something else to say.” Goddamn Derek can be snarky when he’s in the mood.

“Oh, right, what did you mean by make a move?”

Derek jaw tightens, he looks so fierce that Stiles takes a step back. “They’re going to try and get to you,” he says. “You, and Lydia, possibly Danny.”

It sends a weird thrill of fear up Stiles’s spine, but he keeps his voice as steady as he can. He panics a lot less quickly than he used to.

“Why us?”

Derek looks away, his jaw working. “Because you’re human, the three of you. Because if they get to you, and they turn you, you’ll be their best weapons against us. You know how we fight, what our weaknesses are, how to get to us.”

Well shit.

Stiles stares at Derek, slack-jawed, not really sure how to respond to the fact that he’s being actively targeted by vampires. Not to mention that the idea of being turned against the pack, of being used to destroy them, makes him feel sick.

“Okay, um, yeah, okay, good to know,” he says, breathing through his nose. “Thanks for sharing, it’s really - wait a sec, what about Allison? She’s human, too.”

"They’re not going to risk provoking the hunters,” Derek says, “it wouldn’t be worth it.”

Which is a relief, sure, one less person to worry about, but Stiles doesn’t feel that much better.

“So, uh, how do we avoid, you know, being kidnapped and turned,” he asks and how the fuck is this his life?

“I’ve got Jackson and Erica with Lydia right now, and Isaac’s keeping an eye on Danny. We’re not sure the vamps know about him yet, so he’s probably the safest.” Stiles does feel himself relax just a fraction at the news.

“And...and me?” Stiles asks.

“Scott’s going to come over as soon as he’s back,” Derek says, pulling out his phone and tapping the screen. “I’ll be here until then.”

“And...that’s it?”

“What’s it?” Derek asks, looking annoyed.

“I don’t know! Shouldn’t there be, like, holy water, or wooden stakes, or - or something involved?”

Derek rubs his forehead and suddenly looks exhausted.

“We’re doing everything we can, you just have to trust me, okay Stiles? We don’t think anything’s going to happen tonight, but we need to be on our guard until we figure this out.”

There’s no way to respond to that except to hold his hands up in submission.

“Okay, just...keep me informed, okay? Don’t wait til the last minute next time.”

“Fine.” Derek pulls out his phone and starts typing.

Stiles takes a deep breath. “Okay. I’m going to go back inside now and pretend like everything’s normal. Like everything’s going to be fine. Yes. I can do that.”

Derek’s already not paying attention to him, phone to his ear, having a conversation with Scott that’s mostly just growling.

“So I’ll just...go then,” Stiles says, pointing over his shoulder. Derek waves him away and Stiles heads back indoor. He pauses at the hall mirror and tries to fix a normal, relaxed look on his face.

The Sheriff raises no objections to Scott coming over, and Gran is, as usual, delighted by the idea. There is, however, only so long Stiles can keep up the calm expression, and he excuses himself as quickly as he can, escaping to his room where he can worry in peace.

He paces for nearly ten minutes before collapsing onto his bed and pulling out his phone.

To: Danny
9:13 pm
mother
fucking
vampires

It’s unbelievable that, in the middle of this madness, his stomach still squirms pleasantly when Danny replies quickly.

From: Danny
9:18 pm
how the fuck is this my
life.

From: Danny
9:19 pm
our life, i guess

To: Danny
9:23 pm
tell me about it dude. i wish
i could be surprised, but i’m
kinda all out after the last
couple of years

From: Danny
9:25 pm
how do you do this and stay
sane?

Stiles wants to laugh hysterically.

To: Danny
9:26 pm
no freaking clue

To: Danny
9:27 pm
i’m not even sure you do

Danny doesn’t reply straight away, and Stiles wonders if his unplanned honesty scared him off. He sits up, suddenly restless, and moves to his desk.

Googling ‘how to kill vampires’ gets a whole lot of hits, but trying to get anything useful that doesn’t come straight out of a television show is more or less impossible. After a moment he searches ‘protection against vampires’. Nearly everywhere says the same thing, exactly what he would have expected - holy water, stakes, sunlight, crucifixes.

He’s not really sure how you go about making water holy, and as for a stake, there’s not exactly anything handy he could make one out of. And nothing he can do about sunlight.

A crucifix though...

Stiles opens his door quietly and listens intently, making sure his dad and Gran are still downstairs. Once he's certain, he sneaks into his dad’s room and feels around the floor at the back of his dad’s closet until his hands meet the box he isn’t supposed to know is there.

Pulling it out, he pointedly avoids looking closely at anything, rifling through it until his fingers close around cool metal, and he pulls gently, careful not to get it caught in anything. Once it's free from the box, he holds it up to the light.

It’s a small crucifix, gold on a gold chain, and it hung around his mom’s neck right up until the day she died.

Stiles closes his fist around it and shoves it in his pocket, and hurriedly puts the box back in place and returns to his room. He’s only shaking slightly.

He lies back on the bed, fingering the gold chain and wondering if such a simple thing can protect him against monsters. His phone vibrates on his nightstand and he rolls over and snatches it up.

From: big bad
9:54 pm
had to go check on boyd
he’s not picking up his
phone. scott’ll be there
in ten. STAY INSIDE

To: big bad
9:56 pm
yeah like i’m going to go
wandering around when
there are vampires after
me

He's too full of nervous energy to sit still, and he stands up and flicks switch on the lamp on his nightstand. It doesn’t come on, must be unplugged or maybe the bulb’s blown, and he’s crouching down, reaching behind to try and figure out what the problem is when it happens.

It’s not so much that he hears something or catches a glimpse out of the corner of his eye, but he feels it, feels the skin on the back of his neck crawling and the air in the room subtly shift. Still crouching, he slips his phone into his pocket as subtly as he can. He knows what he’s going to see before he spins around, but it doesn’t make him feel better when he sees the man standing over by the window.

“Seriously?” Stiles says, and the man grins in an incredibly creepy manner and yep, those are most definitely fangs. Between one moment and the next he’s standing right in front of Stiles, close enough that Stiles can feel the cold practically radiating off him.

“Sorry kiddo,” the vampire says, and then everything goes black.

*

Stiles has had more experience than he ever thought he would with pain, danger, and freaky-as-shit situations.

This one, however, is new.

He wakes up in a basement, which he's done before, but the ball-and-chain connected to his ankle is definitely a new experience. His hands have also been tied behind his back, very efficiently, too; he can hardly move them, and he knows he has no hope of getting free.

It’s hard to tell how long he’s been out, but from a glance at the tiny window high in the corner, it’s dark out and his muscles aren’t stiff enough for it to have been a full day since he was grabbed. He rolls onto his his side and realizes he miraculously still has his phone, although there's no way for him to get it out of his pocket.

The only real relief is that he’s alone - unless, of course, they’re holding them somewhere else, they haven’t got their hands on Lydia yet, or Danny.

Stiles struggles into a sitting position and takes a few deep breaths. His head is pounding, he’s incredibly thirsty and his shoulders ache from being pulled back, and he’s trying very, very hard not to freak out.

There’s a sharp, throbbing pain in his right arm too, and although he can’t see or touch it, he’s pretty sure it's been sliced open. His shirt is damp near where the pain is radiating from, and sticking to his skin with what he has to assume is his own blood.

But what’s worse than almost anything is the feeling of complete helplessness. There’s absolutely nothing he can do, there’s no one he can talk to, he can’t even argue with his captors. He doesn't know where he’s being held, but it’s completely quiet, which makes him suspect somewhere in the forest. Not that that narrows it down at all.

He tries to move enough to find something he can jostle his leg against, hopefully forcing his phone out of the pocket, but the two feet of give in the chain allows him almost no movement, not to mention the pain that shoots down his entire side when his arm bumps against anything.

Fifteen minutes or so's efforts leave him exhausted and dizzy from the pain, and he lies down flat and hopes for the room to stop spinning. It does, but the dark and quiet slowly eats at his mind, and his breathing begins to quicken, and he wonders if he’s about to have a panic attack. He tries counting backwards slowly from a hundred, eyes closed, breathing deeply. It keeps the panic at bay, but only just.

He tries to think of a hundred ways out of this scenario, tries to work out a single thing he can do, but he comes up with nothing, and eventually he lies down, exhausted and aching, and falls into a fitful doze.

He’s jerked awaked by someone dumping a bucket of cold water in his face, and he splutters his way into consciousness, squinting through the water clinging to his eyelashes at the figure outlined by the light from the doorway.

It’s not the man from before, it’s a woman this time. She looks young - not more than twenty - and she moves with a weird, fluid grace that is absolutely inhuman. She crouches in front of Stiles and forces him into a sitting position.

“So you’d be Stiles, then,” she says, tilting his face up so she can look at it properly. He jerks his face out of her hands, but the sudden movement makes a wave of dizziness crash over him. “Can’t say I see what all the fuss is about.”

“Yeah, ditto,” he says, still struggling to stay upright.

She smirks at him and reaches into her pocket, holding up something long and shiny, and red flashes behind Stiles’s eyes. He lurches forward, nothing in his head but the intense desire to hurt her, but his restraints hold him back and he overbalances onto his side.

She laughs, and the sound grates on Stiles’s ears. He braces himself as best he can and delivers a roundhouse kick to her side with his free leg. The woman doesn’t even move.

“Cute,” she says. She gets a hand on his chest and hauls him up by his t-shirt, pressing him back against the wall, but any fear and panic he could feel is drowned out by the fierce, hot anger. “You know, I might keep this. Such a lovely irony, don’t you think, a vampire wearing a crucifix?” she adds thoughtfully. “You know, for a boy that runs with wolves, you are tragically ill-informed.” She dangles it in front of Stiles’s face and he spits at her. It does nothing but make her laugh.

“It has to be silver,” she says gleefully, and tucks it back into her pocket, the chain still dangling half-out.

She leans closer, her arm traveling up Stiles’s chest and coming to rest on his neck. Her thumb strokes over his jugular slowly and he can't help but shiver. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he really does not want to be a vampire, and he’s never regretted not taking the bite when Peter Hale offered it to him but right now he would take that in an instant.

A nail scrapes across his throat and he swallows reflexively, and then tucks his chin down into his chest to hide as much of his neck as he can from her.

She laughs softly.

“Nice try,” she says, forcing his head back with her other hand, and then she leans in and licks right down his throat. It’s disgusting and cold and somehow snaps him out of his daze.

“They’re going to kill you,” he says flatly. “You think this is going to help you beat them, but it won’t, it’ll just make them a thousand times more dangerous to you.”

“I’m not scared of your little wolf friends,” she says, pulling back to look at him. “They’re far too stupid to catch us.”

Stiles laughs humorlessly. “Okay,” he says. “You keep thinking that. You keep thinking that right up until they’re ripping your throat out.”

For the first time, she looks something other than amused, cold anger flashing across her face.

“You know nothing,” she hisses. She looks a lot more inhuman now, her features colder and harder, her eyes just tinged with red.

Suddenly, there are nosies exploding from above them, and she lurches back, spinning around to look at the doorway. When she turns back to look at Stiles, there’s fury on her face.

“Looks like your friends are here,” she says. “I should go welcome them.” She reaches down and draws a long finger across Stiles’s cheek and down his throat. “But first...” Her hand tightens around his throat and he struggles ineffectually against her grip; she’s far too strong for him. “I want them to see you,” she whispers, and he can feel the vein in his neck throbbing, “covered in blood, I want them to know they were too late to save you.”

Stars are popping behind his eyes and his vision is darkening at the edges, and fuck, this is going to kill his father...

The noise is suddenly much closer, and through the blurriness Stiles can see shapes entering the room, hears a loud, ringing shot, and someone frantically calling his name.

Stiles passes out.

*

His next coming-to is a lot better than the previous ones. He’s in a soft bed, and there are pillows and it’s not dark and most importantly, there do not appear to be any vampires around who want to kill him.

Stiles sits up and immediately regrets it when the room swims around him. A pair of hands shoves him gently back into the mattress and a familiar face comes into view.

“Scott?”

“Yeah, you feeling okay man?” Scott looks extremely concerned, but not actively worried, which is relieving.

Stiles’s head feels kind of fuzzy and there’s a throbbing pain along his right bicep, but on the other hand, he’s alive.

“‘m alright,” he says. “And at the risk of being a totally lame cliche,” he grunts, “where am I?”

“You’re in my room,” Scott says, and then hesitates. “How much do you remember?”

Stiles considers this. “Well, I was in a basement and there was a creepy vampire chick trying to strangle me and possible bite me, and...that’s really it. What happened?” He suddenly feels a lot more alert, and with it comes a wave of worry. He sits up, ignoring the dizziness. “Is everyone okay?”

“Everyone’s fine, dude, lie down,” Scott says, frowning and looking a little freakily like his mom.

“Tell me what happened,” Stiles demands and Scott sighs.

“Okay, just gimme a sec, I gotta tell people you’re awake or they’ll be pissed.” He hurriedly types out a text and Stiles wonders exactly who “people” entails. Duty complete, Scott turns back to him. “Well we worked out pretty quick that you’d been grabbed - I got to your house a few minutes after you texted Derek and you were gone.”

“They must’ve been watching the whole time,” Stiles muses. “There was like a five-minute window, no way it was a coincidence.”

Scott grimaces. “Yeah Derek was really, really pissed. What Boyd saw was a decoy, but by the time they figured that out, it was too late.”

The image of a really, really pissed off Derek Hale still kind of scares Stiles.

“So what happened?” he asks. “How the hell did you guys find me?”

Scott grimaces. “Well, according to Derek, vampires aren't technically alive, so they don’t have a scent,” he says. “They were counting on us not to be able to track them. We couldn’t even trace your scent when you were with them.”

The thought of Scott not being able to find him via scent is more than a little scary.

“Once we knew they’d grabbed you, we got Lydia and Danny to Derek’s place before anything else happened,” Scott continues. “ And then Derek and I got into a huge fight about how best to find where they’d taken you.” Scott looks a little shamefaced, and Stiles laughs.

“Good to know you guys can still fight when my life is hanging in the balance,” he says drily. “So what did you come up with?”

“Get this,” Scott says, the beginnings of a grin on his face. “While we were still arguing, Danny - ” and as soon as he say his name, something warm unfurls in Stiles’s chest - “well, he hacked your phone service provider and traced your location by the GPS.”

Stiles gapes at him. “Whoa.”

Scott nods. “He was really mad, too, he kept yelling at Derek for leaving you in danger.”

Stiles’s mouth drops open. “Danny yelled at Derek? Does he still have all his limbs attached?”

“Yeah, it was kind of awesome,” Scott says with this reverent look on his face.

Stiles barely knows how to even begin to deal with that, with the way it makes him feel warm and jittery and flushed all over, the idea of Danny getting so worked up over him. He ignores his suddenly racing pulse and tries to get his mind refocused.

“Wow, okay, and then what? You all rushed to my rescue? God, I feel like the damsel in distress here,” he complains.

“Gotta say man, you really were in this case,” Scott says, grinning lopsidedly and Stiles tries not to pout. He’s been the hero before, okay, he’s totally rugged and manly and not at all in need of saving. Most of the time.

“Shut up,” he says.

“So next there’s another huge fight about how to get to you, because according to Derek there are at least eight vamps and we can’t fight that many at once, so just he should go alone and break out out - ”

“ - sneaking around isn’t really Derek’s speed,” Stiles interjects. “He’s more the smash-and-grab kinda dude.”

Scott shrugs. “It was a bad idea, there was no way he’d get past eight of them. I told him that, and then Danny says that Derek isn’t going without him because he’s the only one who can keep track of you in case they move you, and then Jackson says Danny isn’t going without him - ”

“Oh God, is this going to end with everyone piling into Derek’s car and speeding to my rescue?”

Scott laughs. “Eventually me, Derek, and Boyd headed in the direction of the house and Jackson drove Danny, who stayed on the phone with Derek and directed him.”

“You guys don’t make things simple, do you,” Stiles observed.

“And Erica and Isaac stayed behind with Lydia,” Scott continues, ignoring his comment.

“Bet Lydia loved that,” Stiles observes.

“Jesus, Stiles, will you just let me tell the story?”

He sounds just like Derek, and Stiles mimes zipping his lips shut and Scott continues.

“Long story short, we found the house pretty easily and watched for a while, and waited for Jackson and Danny to get there.” He shakes his head. “Turned out there were only two vampires.”

“Two?!” Scott glares at him and Stiles shuts up.

“Yeah, I’m still not sure how they fooled Derek into thinking they were more than that. He has some ideas, something to do with human companions whose appearances can mimic vampires, but I wasn’t really listening.”

Stiles whistles. “Bet Derek loved that.”

“Derek didn’t have a great night,” Scott admits. “He went for a run like six hours ago and no one’s seen him since.”

“He’s probably off brooding in the forest, someone should go check on him.”

“I think Erica’s gonna go find him if he doesn’t turn up soon.”

“Okay, so you guys just busted in and grabbed me?” Stiles asks.

“Pretty much,” Scott says, shrugging. “It wasn’t hard to take care of the vamp upstairs, not between the three of us, and then we found you in the basement. She was about to bite you,” Scott says, and he looks a little unsettled now. “When we turned up she had her fangs out. We got there in time, but it was really close.”

Stiles shudders, the memory of her teeth and hands still fresh. The tension causes a jolt of pain in his arm, and he frowns.

“What happened to my arm?”

“Derek says they sampled your blood,” Scott says, nose wrinkling.

“Holy shit,” Stiles says, tugging up the sleeve of his t-shirt to look at it properly. “Does this mean I’m gonna - ”

“Shit, no,” Scott says, shaking his head emphatically. “They cut you with a knife, you weren’t bitten. It was bleeding pretty badly when we found you but Danny staunched it with his shirt until we got you here and my mom stitched you up, you only needed a couple. I only just managed to convince her not to take you to the hospital, but she's not happy about it.”

Stiles is grateful for that, he's spent far too much time in hospitals.

“Oh, that reminds me,” Scott adds, rummaging next to his bed and then hands him a couple of pills. “Pain meds.”

“They’re not that strong, sorry,” he adds, handing Stiles a glass of water. Stiles swallows the pills. “My mom couldn’t get anything stronger without a prescription.”

Stiles half-shrugs. “S'okay, I don't feel that bad. Mostly tired.”

“Oh, and by the way, your dad thinks you’re at Danny’s,” Scott says, taking the glass back from Stiles.

“Huh?”

“Your dad. He came into your room when I was in there and I told him you’d snuck out to see Danny.” Stiles groans. “Yeah, he looked a little annoyed, but not too pissed. Then your gran came in and told him to lighten up and that you were young and in love.” Stiles groans even louder.

“How the hell am I gonna explain this?” he demands, waving to his injured arm.

Scott smirks. “I’m sure you’ll think of something. Maybe you fell off the bed when you and Danny were - ”

“Okay, okay, I get the picture,” Stiles says. He really does, in vivid color, and he doesn’t need to think about that right now. “Am I allowed to leave?” He scoots to the edge of the bed and throws his legs over the edge. When they don’t feel too shaky, he stands.

Scott steadies him with an arm around his back. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I think so,” Stiles says, wincing as his arm moves and throbs with pain. “I probably can’t drive, and I don't even have my car, so...”

“No problem.”

Moving around actually makes him feel better, more alert, and they're halfway to Stiles’s house when he suddenly changes his mind.. There’s someone else he needs to see before he goes home, just in case his father decides to never let him leave the house again.

Scott grins when Stiles asks him to change direction, but he doesn’t say anything, for which Stiles is grateful. He hops out of the car when they stop, with a promise to call Scott later, and then hurries up the drive.

He rings the doorbell, trying to calm his nerves, and suddenly wonders if he should have come up with a plan for what he’s going to say first.

Danny answers the door, and before Stiles can even open his mouth, pulls him in by the shoulders (carefully avoiding his injury, Stiles notices) and hugs him. It’s sudden and surprising, and by the time he’s got his brain coordinated enough with his arms to tentatively slip his uninjured arm around Danny’s waist, Danny is pulling back.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Danny says seriously, eyes flicking to the arm that Stiles is holding stiff.

“Yeah, me too,” Stiles says and laughs a little awkwardly. His palms are already sweating.

“Do you wanna come up?” Danny asks, stepping back and gesturing for Stiles to enter. Up probably means Danny’s room which Stiles isn’t a hundred percent certain he can handle, but he nods anyway and follows Danny up the stairs.

Danny’s room is nice and it’s so...normal; Stiles isn’t quite sure what he was expecting. Danny is, sure, one of the most normal people he knows, but with the amount of time he’s spent pointedly not thinking about Danny’s bedroom at all thank you very much, he’s built it into this mythical place in his head.

“Oh, you want a drink or something?” Danny asks, looking a little nervous like maybe he’s being a bad host.

“Nah,” Stiles says, leaning against the edge of Danny’s desk and crossing his arms. “Nice room.”

Danny shrugs and sits on his bed. He’s watching Stiles with slight concern, like he’s wondering why he’s here and if he's really alright. Stiles isn’t quite sure himself, and he avoids Danny’s eyes in favor of looking around the room curiously.

“Are you sure you're okay?” Danny asks after a long moment. “You didn’t look so great last time I saw you.”

Stiles shrugs. “I’ve had worse.” He’s not trying to be macho, it’s just that he has and this isn’t really what he came here to talk about. “Thanks, by the way,” he adds, feeling his cheeks flush.

Danny looks confused. “For what?”

“Are you serious?” Stiles stares at him. “From what I hear you pretty much saved my life last night.”

“Oh, right, um,” Danny says, looking almost embarrassed. “I just did what I could.”

“Dude, now is not the time for modestly. It was pretty amazing, from what Scott tells me. Good luck getting rid of us now that you’ve proven yourself so helpful in an emergency,” he adds, teasing.

Danny laughs, and Stiles feels it in his chest.

“Look, after tomorrow my grandmother will be gone, so I guess we can break up whenever you want,” he blurts out. He’d meant to lead up to this part of the conversation casually, not derail to completely, but he suddenly needs to spit it out, to say what he came here to say.

Danny blinks at him. “Wait, what?”

“Um, sorry, that was kind of abrupt,” he says, wincing. “I just - I was thinking about it, and I guess things can go back to normal now and I’m grounded for forever anyway when I get home, so it’s probably a good time to - ”

Thankfully, Danny interrupts him.

“Stiles?”

“Yeah?”

“Breathe.”

“Oh, right.” He does take a deep breath, and looks at Danny. “Um, here’s the thing, though. What if we didn’t?”

A tiny furrow forms between Danny’s eyebrows, and he says slowly, “Didn’t what?”

“Didn’t break up.”

Danny stares at him, and his expression is impossible to read. “You want us to continue being fake boyfriends?”

“Not...not exactly.” Stiles looks down and stares at his hands. “I was thinking maybe, if you had any interest at all, we could try the real thing?”

There’s a moment of silence, and when Stiles risks a look at Danny’s face, his expression is impossible to read and he’s still not saying anything and Stiles is going to start hyperventilating any minute now. “Uh, if you don’t want to, that’s cool obviously, just be nice about it okay, I almost got turned into a vampire yesterd- ”

He must be picking up some of Jackson’s superhuman speed or something, because without Stiles registering it, Danny’s off the bed and right in front of him, and then he’s leaning down, taking Stiles's face in his hands and kissing him, cutting him off mid-sentence.

It's a delicious kiss - slow and close-mouthed, just long enough that Stiles’s eyes have time to fall closed before it ends.

“So, uh, that’s a yes?” he hazards, a little giddy and not quite certain that just actually happened.

“Jesus Christ, Stiles,” Danny says, and kisses him again, a little faster this time, a little more desperate and boy, Stiles could get used to this. “You drive me absolutely fucking crazy.”

“I’m gonna take that as a good thing,” Stiles says, impressed that he can get the words out when he’s having difficulty breathing.

“It’s a very bad thing,” Danny says, sliding his hand along Stiles’s jaw. “Did you know that you are impossible to read?”

Stiles has to laugh at that, pushing Danny back so he can look at him incredulously. “Are you serious dude? I asked you to be my fake boyfriend, I spend the entire time staring at you and an entire afternoon basically cuddling you, and you can’t read me?”

“I couldn’t tell how much of it was you and how much of it was acting!” Danny says defensively, although Stiles can still see his dimples, so he can’t be that annoyed. “And sometimes you would look at me like maybe you’re into me, and then you’d go all quiet and reserved and how the hell was I supposed to know?”

Stiles tugs him forward and kisses him again, since that’s something he apparently gets to do now.

“Okay, I’ll be up front,” he says, practically mumbling the words into Danny’s mouth. “I like you. A lot. Have for ages,” he says between kisses. His ass is starting to go numb where the edge of the desk is digging into it, but it’s completely worth it. “Didn’t really know it til Scott said something. Don’t ask, I’ll tell you later,” he adds. It’s getting really hard to think because Danny opens his mouth and now they’re full-on making out, learning the feeling of each other’s lips and tongues and Stiles never wants to stop.

They stumble away from the desk when Stiles leans too far forward, and he takes the opportunity to sneak a hand under the hem of Danny’s shirt. His skin is warm and smooth, and he shivers slightly when Stiles slides his fingers along his waist, gasps when they brush against the small of his back.

Stiles can’t believe he can do that to him, make him shiver and flush and gasp. He drags his eyes away from Danny's waist and grins up at him. Danny stares at his lips, a little cross-eyed with how close he is.

“Do you have any idea,” he says, hands framing Stiles’s face, “how distracting your mouth is? And you’re always chewing something or licking something or - ”

Stiles interrupts him with said mouth, dragging his lips along Danny’s jaw and then finds his mouth again and licking into it hungrily. They’re still moving, staggering across the room, and then they hit the side of Danny’s bed and tumble down onto it. At which point Stiles is abruptly, painfully reminded of his injured arm.

“Motherfucker,” he yelps, and Danny springs off him, looking horrified when he realizes what just happened.

“Oh shit, are you okay?” he asks, his hands hovering hesitantly over Stiles’s shoulder, like he’s not sure he’ll help things or make them worse by touching him.

“Yeah, give me a second,” Stiles says, wincing as he sits up and holds his arm steadily in place. He grits his teeth, waiting for the pain to subside. Danny bites his lip.

“Stay there,” he orders, sliding off the bed.

“Where would I go?” Stiles retorts, and Danny leans in and kisses him briefly on the lips before he hurries out of the room. Stiles takes the opportunity to settle further back into the pillows, and rubs his fingers across his lips, unable to stop himself from grinning. Danny likes him, and it didn't even take a fifteen-year plan to get him there.

Danny returns a couple of minutes later with some pills, a bottle of water, and a bunch of extra pillows.

“Ugh, I can’t take those,” Stiles says regretfully, eyeing the bottle in Danny's hand. “Scott gave me a couple like a half hour ago.” He drinks the water, though, and Danny arranges the pillows so Stiles can prop his arm up and keep it still fairly easily. It’s a good arrangement, except -

“How are we supposed to make out now?” Stiles complains. Danny fits himself along Stiles’s side, half-propped up over him, and leans in, drawing Stiles’s bottom lip between his teeth, sucking it into his mouth. Stiles moans.

“Like this?” Danny says, breathing a little heavily, but still managing a smirk.

“You’re kind of embarrassingly good at this,” he says. “Did you take a class or something?”

“Do you ever stop talking?” Danny asks, pulling back a fraction.

“Sometimes,” Stiles says with a grin, and licks his lips, staring pointedly at Danny’s. Danny leans right back in until they’re almost kissing, holding himself just out of reach.

“Hasn’t worked so far,” he says.

“Clearly you’re not trying hard enough,” is the right thing to say because Danny goes for it, sliding his tongue into Stiles’s mouth, kissing him deeply, one hand wrapped around the back of Stiles’s neck. Stiles brings his functioning arm up and does what he’s wanted to for ages, twisting his fingers in Danny’s hair, holding him close as they kiss.

Danny’s fingers are soft, stroking the skin of his neck gently, his thumb occasionally brushing over his pulse point, and Stiles wonders hazily if he’s thinking about last night, about how close this came to never happening. He shivers and pulls Danny closer.

He’s not sure how long they stay like that, but by the time they separate, Stiles is having trouble opening his eyes and his lips feel puffy and well-used. And he’s got an embarrassingly insistent erection that are making his jeans a little uncomfortable. The situation is not helped at all by the fact that he can feel Danny's dick, just as hard, pressing against his thigh.

“Onghd,” he says, which doesn’t sound quite right. Danny laughs and rests his forehead against Stiles’s collar bone.

“Okay,” Danny says, before Stiles can try again. He sits up properly and scoots back so there’s a good couple of inches between them. Stiles tries not to whine in protest. “This is great,” he continues, and then his eyes drift to Stiles lips and Stiles can feel himself leaning in again until Danny’s hand comes into contact with his shoulder and pushes him back gently. “Dammit Stiles, I’m trying to talk.”

“Wha--?” Stiles says fuzzily, looking up to meet Danny’s eyes. Apparently making out screws with his ability to form words. Good to know.

“This is great, and we should do more of this, but um, it’s really turning me on,” Danny says, looking away and oh god, every single thing he does is adorable. “And you’re all...injured and this just happened, so maybe we should stop for a while.”

He says it regretfully, as he should, because it’s a terrible idea, the worst idea Stiles has ever heard.

“You’re probably right,” he reluctantly admits. “And I should probably go face the music at home.” It’s a crying shame that he has to go home and get in trouble when he could stay here and make out with Danny instead.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Danny rolls over and bends over the side of his bed, fishing in the pocket of a pair of jeans lying on the floor and Stiles enjoys the view immensely. “Is this yours?” Danny asks, rolling back across to Stiles and holding up a gold chain.

Stiles's throat almost closes. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to breathe normally.

“Hey, hey, you okay?” Danny asks, his voice suddenly closer, his hand resting gently on Stiles's thigh. Stiles opens his eyes, and then turns his palm over, and Danny drops the necklace into it.

“Where did you find it?” he asks, his voice tight.

“It was on the floor in the basement last night,” Danny says. “I picked it up in case it was yours, but I've never seen you wear it.”

“It was my mom's,” he said, fist closing tight around it, until the edges of the crucifix dig painfully into his flesh. The thought that he'd almost lost it, that he hadn't even realized...

Danny doesn't say anything, but he slides his arm around Stiles's shoulder, and they sit in silence, Stiles leaning heavily against Danny's side until he feels almost normal again, until the panic dissipates and his pulse slows back to normal.

“Want me to take you home?” Danny asks after nearly ten minutes, squeezing Stiles's shoulder gently.

Stiles nods gratefully, and Danny helps him off the bed, his hands lingering a little longer than necessary, which finally returns the smile to Stiles's face. He retaliates by groping Danny as much as possible on the way to his car, and Danny doesn't do a thing to stop him.

When they pull out outside his house, Stiles doesn’t quite want to get out of the car.

“I’ll text you later,” Danny says, fingers drumming on the steering wheel. Stiles nods.

“If I’m not grounded for the rest of my life, you should come over tomorrow,” he says.“We could watch a movie or something.”

“Like last time?” Danny asks, a teasing smile on his lips.

“Yeah, but maybe with more making out?”

“Good call.” Danny leans across and kisses him for a long moment, just this side of dirty. “Okay, okay, go,” he says, half-groaning. Stiles grins at him and clambers out of the car, and walks to the front door knowing Danny’s watching him.

It’s a good feeling.

*

It turns out Stiles is only grounded for two weeks which, all things considered, isn’t as bad as it could have been. He gets a lecture when he walks in the door, which stops abruptly when his dad catches sight of the bandage around his arm.

God, Stiles is tired of causing that look.

It takes a little while, but he convinces his dad that he just had a clumsy accident and he had to get a couple of stitches but it’s fine, dad, really, Danny took care of me, he took me to the emergency room, it wasn't a big deal.

“I just didn’t want you to worry,” he says quietly, and that much at least is true.

His father shakes his head, and pulls him into a hug and a lump forms in his throat that he swallows down. There was a moment last night when he was completely sure he was going to die, or worse, and the thought of what that would have done to his dad makes Stiles bury his face in his shoulder and hug back just as tight.

Despite his grounding, however, he’s allowed to invite Danny over on Sunday for breakfast because Gran insists on seeing that “nice young man of yours, Stiles” again before she goes.

“So I think my grandmother wants to adopt you,” Stiles says when Danny picks up the phone.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yep,” he says. “She insists you come over for breakfast tomorrow before she leaves. Even though I’m grounded for two weeks.”

"I’m irresistible to parents, dude. Grandparents, too. What can I say, they just love me.”

“It’s because you’re so polite, how do you do that all the time? And how the hell are you friends with Jackson?”

Danny laughs and it makes Stiles smile and he’s turning into that dopey person who gets all squirmy when they hear their boyfriend’s -

Oh, hang on.

“Are we dating now?” he asks, probably giving Danny conversational whiplash for the second time today. There’s a pause on the other end.

“Um, yes?” Danny says, sounding incredibly confused. “Didn’t we already cover this?”

Stiles sighs in relief. “Well not exactly, I sort of asked you out and then we made out for a while, which was a good answer, but some verbal confirmation is nice.”

“Oh my god, Stiles, yes, we’re going out now. Is that okay?”

“I’ll think about it and get back to you.”

*

Breakfast actually goes surprisingly well, given that the Sheriff occasionally shoots Danny suspicious glances like he thinks it’s his fault Stiles snuck out and got injured, but Danny takes it calmly, and by the end of the meal he and the Sheriff are having a lively discussion about baseball.

Stiles thinks maybe Danny is a little magic.

After breakfast, Stiles carries Gran’s things downstairs, and like he does every time she’s leaving, he regrets not spending more time with her. Standing in the driveway, she pulls him into a goodbye hug and it’s soft and motherly and he has to squeeze his eyes shut to stop them from welling up.

“I was thinking,” he mumbles when she lets go of him, “I could come down and see you sometime soon? Maybe over Christmas?”

She kisses him on the forehead. “That would be great, baby. Bring your dad, too, and Danny. I like seeing you happy,” she adds, and Stiles is going to cry like a child in a moment, so he just nods and kisses her cheek and steps back.

Gran gives Danny a hug and whispers something to him that Stiles would bet a lot of money is something hideously embarrassing involving him. When she lets go, Danny’s biting his lip and looking pleased, and Stiles makes a note to get the secret out of him at some point.

And then, just before she gets in the car, she turns back and gives Stiles one last hug.

“Be safe, okay?” she says, her face weirdly serious and something in her eyes that makes Stiles wonder, just for a second, if she could possibly know.

Stiles waves them down the street, feeling a little bereft, and Danny comes up behind him and wraps his arms around him.

“So,” Stiles says after a few moments, leaning back into him. “Home alone.” It sounds nearly as sleazy as he was going for, and exactly as cheesy.

“Thought your dad said I had to leave once they did?” Danny says, faux-innocently, leaning down to kiss Stiles’s jaw.

“He won’t be back for at least an hour and a half.” He turns in Danny’s arms and raises his eyebrows suggestively.

“Stiles, we’re not having sex until we can do it without ripping one of your stitches out.”

“Get your mind out of the gutter, Mahealani, I didn’t mean that.”

“Uh huh, sure you didn’t,” Danny says, but he pulls Stiles closer and kisses him slowly. Stiles groans as Danny works his way across his jaw until he mouths at the soft skin behind Stiles’s ear.

“Noh, if you’re trying to talk me out of sex, I think you’re doing it wrong,” Stiles observes, and he reaches up to turn Danny’s head so he can kiss him on the lips. “Maybe we should go inside.”

“If we go inside, I’m not going to be able to stop touching you,” Danny argues, which sends a spike of arousal through Stiles. As if to prove his point, one of his hands slips to Stiles’s waist and his fingers creep underneath Stiles’s shirt.

“That’s cheating,” Stiles complains, but he arches into the touch a little. “And this is verging into arrested-for-public-indecency territory. Do you know how embarrassing that would be for me? Every single cop in the county knows me, I could never show my face at the station again.”

“Well for the sake of your reputation...” Danny disentangles himself from Stiles. “I’m going to go now,” he says, not moving.

“You do realize this is the last chance we’re going to have to be alone for two weeks right?” Stiles says, crossing his arms. “I can’t believe you’re ignoring that because of some lousy stitches.” He pouts, and Danny rolls his eyes and kisses him one more time.

“There’s always the locker room,” he mumbles against Stiles's lips, and God, the man’s a genius.

“You’re a genius,” Stiles says fervently. Danny grins and now he’s really leaving, heading down the driveway to his car.

“See you at school,” he calls over his shoulder.

Stiles has never looked forward to Monday more.