𝗖𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗿𝘃𝗼𝘆𝗮𝗻𝘁

Fake It Till You Make It

❥

Stiles is pacing around the high school hallway, while Scott is softly checking my neck.

"How the hell did he find out?"

"I have no idea." Scott says while lifting my chin, making sure that I'm slowly healing. He carefully slides his fingers across the bruises, and moves my hair out of the way. I wince when he touches a part of my scalp right above my neck. He furrows his brows and parts my hair to find raw skin from Jackson's grip on my neck -- his fingers pushed so deeply that he managed to take off a layer of skin with short nails.

Stiles is watching as Scott notices this, and walks back over to Jackson, swiftly kicking him in the gut before continuing.

"Did he say it out loud?" Stiles asks, "the word?"

Scott backs away when he's satisfied with how fast my neck has begun healing. I look up to Stiles, who is still nervously pacing. "What word?"

"Werewolf." He responds, whispering it as if he were saying a bad word around his parents. "Did he say, 'I know you're a werewolf' to you?"

I shush Stiles, and motion to Jackson who is still on the ground, groaning in pain, blurring in and out of consciousness.

"Damn Stiles, what'd you do to him? Stop pulling your punches, Spider-Man?" Scott mumbles, staring at Jackson.

"No, he didn't say it. But he implied it pretty fucking clearly!"

I watch as Stiles tries to talk himself out of a freakout. "Okay, maybe it's not as bad as it seems?" He looks at us and waits for an answer, but continues as we just stare. "I mean, he doesn't have any proof, right? And, if he wanted to tell someone, who's gonna believe him anyway?"

Scott and I look at each other and make silent conversation, before looking back at Stiles and saying in unison, "How about Allison's father?"

Stiles stops pacing to push his back against a locker beside me. He starts slowly sliding down it with a blank expression. "...Okay, it's that bad."

I can smell the panic rising from both of the boys next to me. My heart rate is suspiciously low, leaving me wondering if it's from the dissipating adrenaline from choking, or from Stiles sitting next to me, his hands finding their way to mine.

I've noticed as we've gotten older, Stiles has never changed the way he holds someone's hand. if his fingers are intertwined, he will start tapping his fingers across the other persons knuckles, as if he is playing the imaginary piano. Sometimes, he will loosen his grip so that he can lift his fingers high enough to be tapping right on top of the knuckles. If his hand is simply clasped around another, he will give the other persons hands small squeezes in patterns, expecting nothing more than for them to copy the patterns back. It quickly turns into a game, where he makes a pattern and I copy it back before creating my own for him to copy.

Today is a pattern kind of day. He squeezes two times in a row, before leaving a small gap and squeezing a third time. I copy it back, making my own. one one one, pause, two two.

"I need a cure -- right now." Scott sighs, resting his head against a locker.

Jackson quietly groans "Ouch..." reminding us he's still half conscious on the floor.

"You awake there?" I ask, extending my leg to push lift his arm up. He doesn't respond, and I move my leg back, leaving his arm to limply flop back down onto the tile. "Nope. He isn't."

"Does he know about Allison's father?" Stiles asks, still squeezing my hand. One, pause, two two two.

Scott shrugs. "I don't know."