Wednesday Morning, March 8th. Gameday.
It was ten in the morning. It was ten in the morning and Stiles was running through Beacon Hills High like he didn't just break damn near every bone in his body two days ago. Shifter healing was incredible-- so was teenage romance.
He cursed to himself as he dashed down a long hallway, teachers bobbing their heads out of classrooms to call after him angrily.
"He-- Stiles!"
"Hehe-- Sorry, practicing for tonights game!" Stiles yelled back.
"You don't play!"
Stiles skidded to a halt at the end of the hall, looking back to see a few students seated at the benches lined against the walls laughing at the teachers comment.
"Why would you say that so loud?" Stiles asked.
The teacher shrugged innocently as the phone in Stiles pocket buzzed anxiously, "ALRI-- Alright, I'm moving." He said to the phone before disappearing from the teacher and laughing students.
What lay ahead was the entrance into the library.
He burst through the doors like a man on a mission. His breaths heavy and loud-- loud enough to cause the librarian to look at him from behind her desk over the rim of her thick oval glasses.
Stiles smiled sheepishly, "Sup."
The librarian raised a wrinkly finger to her lips.
"....Right." Stiles said before walking off towards the back of the library.
As he made his way, he found members of the Lacrosse team sprinkled all about the room, at tables, seating on couches near thick polished brown bookshelves. All the same as usual. Except for one person.
Jackson.
Stiles found him hidden away near the back of the library. As usual, he wore his expensive douchie clothing-- the smell of the gel caking his hair made Stiles want to gag-- but that was due to the scents of old blood mixed in. If that wasn't enough to be questioned, Jackson was in the middle of talking with Danny about something.
Stiles listened in, pretending he was interested in the ten year old rentable movies and pre-recorded seminars featured on the small table across from the bookshelves.
"So, can you do it? I know it's not hard for you, so there's no reason you shouldn't be able to, Danny."
".....Yea-- yea. I can enhance the video for you Jackson. But can you tell me what it is?"
Silence followed.
Stiles turned around as the silence continued, only to find Jackson and Danny looking straight at him. Stiles chuckled and held up the movie he was looking at to them.
Danny looked at him with confusion, causing Stiles to look at what he was holding. It was a recorded seminar on sexual education.
"Oh sh--"
"It's nothing." Jackson said before handing Danny the video and leaving the space between the bookshelves.
"Out of the way, benchwarmer." Jackson snarled as he shoulder-checked Stiles on his way out, causing him to drop the CD.
Stiles watched him leave, eyes focused on the claw marks still visible in the back of his neck. After he was gone, he sighed and dropped down to pick up the CD. In it's reflective surface, he found his eyes glowing with the rising heat of his own anger.
Why was he still acting like he couldn't be just like Scott? Why was he still trying to put on a front? To be funny..... warm. Hell had descended on Beacon Hills and he was still being bothered with.... all this?--
"Hey, man. Sorry about him, he's... well I don't know what's going on with him." Danny's voice knocked him out of his own thoughts, causing him to shake his head as he stood back up to face Danny.
Jeez. Sometimes he wondered if Danny was a Shifter in his own right based off how stacked with muscle he was. As the two stood face to face, Stiles felt dwarfed in size. Even after his own physical transformation.
".....Well, he's just having a rough week." Danny concluded his ideas on Jackson's heightened state of aggravation.
Stiles shrugged and slapped Danny on the shoulder, "Oh yea.... I'm sure having a cool car and a giant house is so impossibly unbearable..... not to mention being able to say you date Lyd--"
Stiles phone buzzed in his pocket again. He was going to slap Scott the next time he saw him. "Anyway, I have to go continue to play as a messenger bird for Romeo and Juliete."
"What?" Danny asked.
"Nothing. Good luck with that... tech job. It reminds me of when you did the same for me...."
"Oh yea with your cousin.... Miguel?" Danny said as Stiles walked away.
Stiles stopped and turned to face Danny, "What?"
Suddenly the memory of Derek bleeding out from Silver Poisoning in his room while Danny balanced doing research and gawking at the WereWolf appeared in his mind.
"Oh yea!" He said with a knowing smile, "Miguel.... he says hi."
Danny smiled faintly, "He does?"
Stiles was already gone.
***
Alison jumped from her books as Stiles came to a heavy breathing stop at her table.
"Oh....whew..... he said--"
"How are you tired? Aren't you all like..... superhuman?" Alison questioned.
"Don't remind me." Stiles joked as he looked around her table.
Despite the seemingly joking reply, Allison could've sworn she saw pain in his face-- if only for a moment.
"Anyway-- where's Lydia?" Stiles asked, noticing Allison was alone at the back of the room.
"Therapy." Alison said.
Stiles thought it over for a moment, remembering her outburst at lunch only days ago. Therapy wasn't the solution but getting her to talk to someone may have been good. He should talk to her. He would.
"So, what did Scott say?" Alison pulled him from his thoughts.
"He said he's sorry about not being able reply to you that night-- he wants to meet you sometime this week. Like you used to do." Stiles explained.
"I can't..... I want to-- but the guards."
"God damn..." Stiles scratched his buzzed head, "You're like the princess is those disney movies."
"Stiles...." Alison said.
"My bad. I'll tell him."
***
And tell him he did. And again.... and again. By the fourth time he came to Alison with a message, he had a newfound respect for Phones and question of why time felt like it was going so slow.
Stiles approached Alison, nearly crashing into the seat at the table opposite her. "He asked if you wanted him to sneak over in between their shifts. He said he could do it... No, he said he'd do it in a heartbeat."
Alison smiled at his words.
Stiles looked like death warmed over as he rested his head in his hands. Despite everyone else crashing early yesterday after the blood-filled all-nighter, Stiles couldn't sleep. He hadn't had a good night's sleep in a while for that matter.
"...."
Suddenly he realized Alison didn't give him a message to receive. He looked up at her to find that she was locked into her phone.
Stiles smacked his lips, "What the hell? If you were gonna text anyway what was the point of this?"
"I'm not texting Scott."
"Who then?" Stiles asked with a raised eyebrow.
Alison shook her head and ran a hand through her brown curly hair. She was visibly stressed, but he didn't know why.
"Alison...? What's wrong?" His anxiety writhed in the pits of his stomach like a tangle of snakes. This was usually the part where they learned that another student was bitten-- or somebody was dead. Very dead.
The bell rung, causing Stiles to explode out of his chair with a snarl at the alarming sound.
Alison raised her hands in shock, "Stiles-- calm down!"
Stiles sighed and ran his hands over his face shakily, "... Sorry. Where were we? Oh yea, is there a problem-- please stop building suspense and say something."
Alison turned off her phone and tucked it in her purse as she got up with her bundle of books. Chemistry, English, and Supernatural Fiction. Nice.
She began writing something on a torn piece of paper from her notebook.
"You and Scott need to go here at two."
"What about class? The game?"
"Just go. It's an emergency." Alison said as she pressed the paper to his chest and walked off.
"Wha-- What just happened?!"
"Bring Derek." Alison whispered back at him before jogging off to catch up with the fleeing wave of students. Her curls a hypnotic bounding animation on loop as she disappeared.
Stiles looked down at the paper. It was an address that led to the edge of town. In fact, he'd been by the area when driving with his Dad during work. All that was in the area were empty warehouses and holding centers.
"Why here?" Stiles wondered as he headed out of the Library.
On his way out, he found Marco, standing alone at a bookshelf. He held a book about Military History. The Allied Powers and how they were able to work cohesively in times of war.....
In his other hand, he held his phone that he was in the middle of tucking away when he looked up at Stiles.
Stiles waved hesitantly. Marco continued to stare like a stalking dread-headed giant.
Stiles suddenly felt like walking away.
As he exited the library, he felt Marco's eyes on him like knives in his back, interrupting his thoughts about the note in his pocket.
"Why would Alison want us to go to the edge of town in two and a half hours?"