The last thing James "Jay" Hale ever imagined was to begrudgingly return to Beacon Hills, find out his older sister was murdered, and then be forced to go on a wild goose chase after some fuck ass Alpha that seemed to have a particular interest in r...
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CHAPTER FORTY-TWO:
♫It's My Birthday And I'll Drug You If I Want To♫
✧✧✧✧
Stiles Stilinski was not, and had never been, known for his patience. This was an indisputable fact—etched in stone, reinforced by years of anecdotes, and probably the reason his dad kept a steady supply of Tylenol in the house.
To put it simply, Stiles lived his life like he was speedrunning a video game, a metaphor gifted to him by a weary child therapist who'd spent one too many sessions trying to explain ADHD to a boy who couldn't stop bouncing in his seat like a pinball.
To sum it up, Stiles had a compulsive need to hit every achievement as fast as possible, earn every star, and there was no time for breaks. Sometimes side quests—like his best friend turning into a werewolf, for example—popped up, and Stiles dove in headfirst without hesitation. He was always on the move. And sure, his athletic stats were trash, his love life was perpetually glitched, and losing his mom early on made things a whole lot more difficult, but he always got back up and pushed on. His impatience came hand in hand with his perseverance. His stubbornness was reinforced by his sheer pride. He was a force to be reckoned with.
Then James Hale went and stumbled into his life, and Stiles became convinced the universe sent him as some divine test—or, more likely, punishment—for all that patience and understanding he lacked.
Because again, if there was one area where Stiles consistently failed in his speedrun of life, it was love. Loving Lydia had been a study in masochism—ten years of pining and being utterly invisible. But ignorance, as they say, is bliss, and Stiles didn't realize how complicated things could get until he started to like Jay.
Jay, who treated the concept of friendship both like it was a contagious disease and like the word itself was a literal slur.
Jay, who then gagged—actually gagged—while begrudgingly admitting, months later, that they were in fact technically friends.
Jay, who was so busy navigating what a friendship was that it took him forever to notice Stiles' massive, neon-sign-level crush.
Jay, who proceeded to like him back the exact moment Stiles resolved to prioritize their friendship—and Jay's fragile mental health—over his own feelings.
And now, Jay was testing every ounce of Stiles' nonexistent patience again. This time, by tumbling out of a janitor's closet—hair a tangled mess, face flushed, and clothes wrinkled in ways that screamed someone else's invasive and downright disgusting hands had been all over him.
And maybe Stiles was an idiot. Maybe he had no right to feel like this. Like someone had ripped his heart out, set it on fire, stomped it into smithereens, ground their heel into it, made it a squished unrecognizable mess, and—
