when you see this, post an excerpt from a wip
It’s 8 o’clock on a Tuesday night, and the bar is mostly empty. A guy in a suit nursing three fingers worth of bourbon, a man and a woman who are seemingly together but both buried in their phones, two retirees with empty plates and empty beers sticking around for the conclusion of Game 3 of the World Series, a group of co-eds at one of the high tops. It’s halfway between San Francisco and Beacon Hills and hasn’t hosted a full house crowd since the 80s, which makes it perfect. Stiles picks a spot off to the side and slides onto a stool.
Before he’s even settled in, the bartender flashes him a smile and slips a cocktail napkin in front of his place. “Can I get you anything?” He opens his mouth to respond, but he’s quickly distracted by the TV screen on the opposite wall where the first baseman is about to make the final out of the night. She follows his line of sight, twisting around to watch the ball land perfectly in his glove. End of Game 3. A little ways down the bar, the two retirees grunt their approval, and the bartender swivels back around with an even wider smile. “Especially now that we’re celebrating.
Stiles raises an eyebrow in silent protest. “Celebrating?”
She mirrors his expression as she leans a little closer and says, “You live in California, and you’re going to root against the Angels?”
“My mom grew up in Chicago,” he says, holding up his hands in a what can you do? gesture.
“You’re rooting for the Cubs?” She scrunches up her nose in disapproval, and he gives a second shrug of his shoulders. “Well I might have to ask you to leave then. Want to order anything while I make up my mind?”
“Coors? Please.” The bartender nods and taps the surface of the bar twice before moving away.
Alone, Stiles pulls his phone and checks it. It’s now 8:04. He glances over his shoulder at the door, then back down at his phone, the screen still blank. His foot starts tapping against the rung of his stool, just a little faster than the song playing in the bar. It’s been years since he took something for his ADHD, but something itches beneath his skin as he glances down at his phone in time to watch the time flip over to 8:05. Then he glances over his shoulder again.
“So.”
Stiles’s head whips back at the sound. The bartender sets the bottle in front of him, lips pursed in whatever question comes next. About Chicago… he can practically hear her say. He’ll laugh and give another shrug as he recounts the story of his grandparents, Polish immigrants, who settled in the only major city in the Midwest teeming with reminders of home. About his mother who couldn’t wait to escape the miles of cornfields she grew up surrounded by. About his father stationed on the coast, the furthest thing from a cornfield. Because there’s no better time than 8 o’clock (8:06) on a Tuesday to spill your life story to a complete stranger. But she’s cut off by a gasp from somewhere behind Stiles, and one of those coeds is suddenly dangerously close to invading his personal space.
“Can you turn it up?” she breathes, blue eyes wide. “They’re talking about it.”
He follows her line of sight to the TV in the corner. The game is over, replaced by the nightly news. On the screen, a reporter talks to the camera, the US Capitol building a backsplash behind her. Stiles’s stomach wastes no time forming a thick, tight knot.
“It’s muted,” the bartender deadpans, but if the blonde notices, she doesn’t let on, as she nods eagerly. The bartender stares for another minute before she sighs and moves away to adjust the volume until the TV starts to compete with the Bruce Springsteen song still playing overhead.
“…has garnered a surprising amount of support in the last year, Ron,” the reporter says onscreen. “But there’s still a lot of upheaval over this controversial issue, especially outside of California.”
The image changes to a hallway somewhere, a middle-aged woman in a red dress now standing with a microphone in front of her face. “It’s just not safe. Who knows what those… those things are capable of?” She punctuates the question with a shiver, like she’s physically ridding herself of the thought.
Again, the camera switches to a slightly older man in a suit. “This is a slippery slope,” he says, wagging his finger at the camera in a way that probably won’t get him the re-election votes he thinks it will. “Pretty soon, people will be demanding rights for their pet goldfish. And what then?”
Stiles snorts at the irony of the guy’s statement, unintentionally breaking the silence that had settled over the bar.
“He’s right, you know,” one of the retirees says as he wags his finger in the same way, first at Stiles, then back at the TV. Stiles feels grateful when the stranger turns his attention back to his friend and busies himself with picking at the corner of his bottle’s label while still listening in. “We don’t know where this ends. And they’ll spread - like an infection. And how will we even know? You can’t tell by lookin’ at ‘em!”
“It’s almost like they’re just like us,” Stiles mutters under his breath as he works a corner loose. He didn’t realize the bartender had drifted back his direction, not until she leans forward and presses her elbows against the bar, also dangerously close to invading his personal space.
“They bothering you?”
He shakes his head. “They’re just -” But she cuts him off with a sigh.
“I’m just tired of it, y’know? Like I’m 28, and this hasn’t even been a thing till now. Couldn’t they have just stayed wherever it was they were?” Her words drip with empathy, and Stiles realizes too late that she thinks they share the same frustration. He’s silently glad he didn’t tell her his entire life story. “I mean, I get it - kinda - but it’s like - Oh shit.”
Stiles knows before he looks to see what she’s staring at just over his head. He knows before the door falls shut again. He knows before he realizes he can hear the door fall shut because it’s now silent - the entire bar.
“Jesus Christ,” the old guy mutters across the bar, and Stiles spins around, smile wide as he waves.
“Hey, Scotty!”
Scott stands just inside the door, like a deer caught in the headlights, which is probably a fitting metaphor right now. He blinks rapidly as he takes in the crowd of stares, all directed at him, and then he ducks his head and gazes down at his feet as he walks quickly to the empty stool beside Stiles’s. Derek has a tendency to square his shoulders and set his jaw now, a silent threat of what he’s capable of becoming, but Scott’s the opposite. He shrinks down into a form so human, no one would know if this entire mess hadn’t made him its poster child.
“Hey, y’know, next time?” Stiles says as he slaps his best friend on the back before he’s even sitting. “Maybe leave your scarlet L at home?”
Scott glares in his direction before starting to shrug his jacket off. His arm is almost free when that same blonde coed is back at their side, eyes even wider than before.
“Oh. My. God,” she sighs. Her face is so pale, Stiles worries that she might pass out. But then she squeals and grabs the bar, just shy of Scott’s elbow. “You’re Scott McCall!”
“No.” Stiles immediately leans back as far as he can, holding onto the bar to steady his stool that’s now balanced on its back two legs so he can see around Scott to the girl. “No, you can’t get a picture. No, he can’t do the thing with his eyes. No, he’s not going to show you his fangs or his claws. No, he’s never met Michael J. Fox, Michael Sheen, or Jack Nicholson, so he didn’t help them rehearse for the role. No, you don’t get to know if he’s single or dating or into humans.” Stiles pants as he finishes his rant, stopping to take a deep breath before he asks, “Any other questions?”
Her face quickly turns from alabaster white to bright red. At first, she looks like she might actually cry, but then she shakes her head as she takes a step back, directly into the arms of one of her friends who whispers something in her ear, carefully raising her voice for just the word asshole.
“Thank you,” Stiles says with a wave of his hand. He watches the girls turn back around and retreat to their table before he rocks his stool back to its steady base with a sigh. But as soon as he looks away from the girls, he’s met with Scott’s judgemental stare. Stiles sighs again. “What?”
“You couldn’t have been nicer to her?” he asks, voice hushed.
“You’re not a celebrity! You’re just… fighting the legal battle of the century.”
“It’s not the legal battle of the century,” Scott corrects in a mumble under his breath. He tries to stare straight ahead, but Stiles can see the way his eyes occasionally dart over to the elderly men who throw down a wad of cash and leave without another word. To the woman a little ways down the bar who’s stood up and stands behind the man she’s with now, knuckles white as she grips his shoulder while they wait for their bill. To the college girls who can’t stop gawking and whispering, like he’s Ryan Gosling or something. Eventually, he settles for staring up at the TV, where the evening news has thankfully moved on to recapping Game 3.
“Well, you made the news again tonight,” Stiles says with a sweep of his beer bottle in the direction of the TV. Scott looks back over at him with concern in his eyes, and Stiles rushes to correct himself. “The case did, I mean. Some asshat in a suit trying to argue that if Derek’s marriage is legal in Georgia, then some loser living in his mom’s basement might try to marry his pet fish.”
Scott turns his attention back to the TV, but there’s a tension in his shoulders now, fist clenched at his side. “Swinton,” he mutters, voice dropping a little quieter. Stiles raises an eyebrow, not recognizing the name. “Some scientist in Alabama. He’s the one who lobbied for that law that bans blue monkshood but not yellow.”
“So you can’t get drunk, but they can kill you.”
“Right.”
“Fuckers,” Stiles mutters under his breath.
Scott snorts, but sobers quickly with a sigh and a shake of his head. “That doesn’t matter. If we could just get the cagings and the lynchings to be illegal everywhere -”
“-And make sure you guys have basic human rights,” Stiles interjects.
“Just the torture. For now. Then we can worry about everything else.” Scott’s shoulders slump as that newest wave of anger ebbs, and Stiles reaches over to gently squeeze the back of his neck in a comforting gesture. Scott carries a lot of guilt in the space between his shoulders and etched into those new lines around his eyes that no amount of persuasion has helped to lessen in the past few years. He needs this victory more than he’ll admit aloud.
“We’re gonna win,” Stiles says as he squeezes his neck a second time.
Scott’s expression is more grimace than smile and doesn’t come close to meeting his eyes. “Does it count if it feels like this, though?”
Scott’s eyes scan the room, and Stiles’s gaze follows. The bigots and their unwanted commentary are long gone. So is the woman who shook like a leaf and buried her face in her husband’s shoulder when they walked past. The suit is still just sitting there, staring down into his glass of whiskey, but the college girls are crowded around their phones, probably basking in their newfound popularity after tweeting about their encounter. The bartender has moved down the bar, too, busy wiping down glasses as she keeps her distance now, either out of fear or embarrassment. This bar is a microcosm of their entire existence now: a weird mixture of fear, anger, and unwanted attention. There’s no future where Scott McCall doesn’t live on in infamy.
“Hopefully it doesn’t always feel like this,” Stiles offers with a shrug of his shoulders.
Scott’s expression moves a little closer to a smile, but there’s a sadness there, too. It makes him look older than his 26 years and more tired than Stiles has seen them awhile. They don’t talk about the casualties of this war they’ve been waging so much anymore, but everyone knows they’re there: Lydia. Issac. Malia. They all carry around battle scars now - lost opportunities, failed careers, doomed relationships, physical wounds, physical losses. Almost a decade of their lives.
It sounds like a cliche, but it started slow, when it did start almost a decade ago. There was a lot of fear after Scott was caught red-eyed and claw-handed in the library. That image stuck while Beacon Hills conveniently forgot Scott McCall saved their collective asses, and that fear bred a lot of hatred in return. Then Davis retracted their offer for Scott’s spot in the Class of
2016. Patients started refusing Melissa’s care. The county filed a lawsuit against Stiles’s dad.
It only got worse when other packs in other states stepped forward in solidarity. Scientists wanted to pull Scott and Derek apart - literally - in their quest for answers. Parents thought they should be locked away, somewhere where they couldn’t succomb to their thirst for blood and try to turn their children. Evangelicals tried exorcisms, which was surprising, considering it was always the Catholics who believed in demonic possession. The first lynching happened in Oklahoma. The cages first appeared in Tennessee. Ohio’s courts had to step in before hospitals stopped inflicting pain on newborn babies to see if they would shift. (That was almost five years ago, and no one has yet to confirm what happened to the babies that did shift.)
And that wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst of it was a domino effect leading back to here. Their legal battle started when Lahey’s Law was declared unconstitutional by the Michigan Supreme Court. It took three years before they went to trial. It was another two after that before Michigan, with Texas’s support, earned an appeal. And now, a year later, a final appeal to the Supreme Court.
They know the odds. Lydia memorized them first, but they can all recite them now: 15,000 cases apply, and the court can hear 100 at most. Certiorari is a part of Stiles’s every day vocabulary, Derek knows the justices’ decision records like other people know athletes’ stats, Scott has three lawyers on his speed dial. Stiles’s dad had asked how he was feeling after one of those first meetings with the lawyers, back when the loft was sufficient enough for strategizing and combing over evidence, and Stiles had said Like I should’ve paid better attention in Civics.
“Okay,” Stiles says now as he drums the top of the bar, pushing aside thoughts of their impending court case. “What do you got for me this time?” Scott looks a little startled by the question, and Stiles can’t help but smile. “What? You thought I thought you wanted to meet just because? So you can get a buzz via osmosis?” Stiles raises his beer in a solo toast before taking a drink.
Scott’s eyes dart around the room, and Stiles’s eyes follow, but it’s still just the guy in the suit, the girls huddled around their phones, the bartender who is obviously keeping her distance now. “I thought you said this place was empty,” Scott sighs.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t give me a whole lot of notice.” The timestamp on Scott’s Meet @ 8? Somewhere between? reads three hours ago, and Stiles is still just learning what exists between his hometown and San Francisco, his current home. “Plus, this is still better than the zoo your place is,” he adds, picturing the mess of reporters perpetually camped outside Scott’s Beacon Hills home. “It’s starting to look like you’re giving the Kardashians a run for their money.”
Scott ducks his head again, face suddenly read. “Someone wants to do a reality show.”
“No shit?” Stiles asks, brows raised. Scott nods. “I swear to god, I’ll kill you.”
Scott groans, but doesn’t bother to respond - they both already know the negative press outweighs whatever coverage would do to humanize the pack - as he reaches back behind him instead, fishing in the pocket of his jacket. A few seconds later, he pulls his hand free holding a photo that he slides across the bar.
In front of him, Stiles finds a young couple with wide smiles and a toddler balanced on the woman’s hip. He’s about Scott’s height with lighter hair and his arm looped around the woman’s waist. Her blonde hair falls just past her shoulders in soft curls, and the flash of the camera reflects in her hazel eyes in a way that makes them look almost amber, a color Stiles knows by heart. The toddler stares back at Stiles with matching eyes, clutching a fistful of her mother’s shirt, until Stiles’s chest physically starts to ache, and he has to flip the picture over. On the back, he finds writing:
Brendan Roades, 34
Callista Roades, 31
Poppy Roades, 3
“She’s a friend of Hannah’s, from the Michigan pack,” Scott explains as Stiles stares down at the list of names and ages until his eyes water. “She moved to Texas when she got married, but Hannah stayed in touch. I guess they mostly kept to themselves till a couple weeks ago when the baby shifted in public. And Texas -”
“Fuck,” Stiles cuts him off. “They’re gonna take the baby. The fucking government can take her because of that bullshit law and make her their little science experiment.”
“Which is why they left.” Stiles’s head snaps back up, staring at his friend in confusion. “Callista called Hannah, asked if it was safe to come back. But Hannah lost contact with them somewhere in the middle. That was five days ago.”
Stiles swallows hard as he flips the picture back over, studying their faces again. It’s not the first time Scott’s come to him with a story like this. He’s become the public face of what TIME Magazine has dubbed The WereRevolution, but the McCall pack had made a name for itself in the underground network of packs throughout the U.S. long before this all started. As things have become more complicated, he’s just become their contact more frequently. Neither of them remembers anymore if word got out on its own that a member of the pack now worked for the FBI, or if Scott had said those words in an attempt to provide solace to someone, but this has become their arrangement. Scott collects missing pack members’ stories, and Stiles pulls every string he can.
“They’re probably just holed up somewhere,” Scott says. “Waiting till it’s safe. Till it’s not everywhere.” He jerks his head toward the TV where the ticker tape now reads Viral petition amasses one million signatures in one day demanding NFL test for “weres.” Everywhere. “The Supreme Court’s gonna decide if they’ll hear our case or not any day. Maybe they’re just waiting it out.”
Stiles stares hard at the picture, moving his thumb to cover up the small child and her wide, innocent smile. The first time Scott handed him a photo like this, it took Stiles a week to connect the missing werewolf to a suicide that happened a week after cable networks started running ads for wolfsbane bullets. Two weeks ago, it was the victim of a hate crime in a state that hasn’t adopted Lahey’s Law, so no arrest was made.
Stiles sets the picture back down, revealing the toddler and her tiny fist, holding on for dear life. He reaches over to squeeze Scott’s shoulder just a little too hard. “We’ll find them.”
