[ grasp those gnarly edges and don’t let go]
summary: scott mccall has a jacket in the future, he needs it in the past
fandom: teen wolf , au / time travel
The breeze is nice against his face, almost cold, soft enough to ruffle his hair and he wants to lean into it — like a hand caressing his cheek. He’s standing, leaning against the wall. His eyes are heavy, itchy like grit trapped between skin, and they flutter between the shadows of sleep and the gleam of the street lamp.
He takes a breath, and there’s the smell of rain against the ear and the knots in his shoulders roll from his muscles as they relax into the jacket. That smelt new, everything smelt new. Fresh, mingled with a delirious choking smoke that grows thick at the back of his throat.
He reached down and tugged the tag off. It was new though, this, foreign between his fingers and rough against his skin. It had come with a note and those familiar words and he’s rolling the tiny ball of paper between his fingers because that’s all he has to anchor.
His nose hurts, like that burning rippling up the bone before you sneeze. [ Or cry .. ]
He takes another breath and let’s his heart thrum beneath his chest. Their faces were still etched in his mind, but now distorted, coiling grotesquely between new and old and his and them , they all feel too young. They are his pack but they are puppets on a rope and the string is thinning and with each passing day another thread slips.
They’re is pack but they are not. And he cannot shake that feeling no matter how hard he tried — imposters.
His wolf rumbles gently in his chest, and that smoke is back and his eyes are stinging. He can almost see it in the shadows, curling down to rub against his leg, a soft purr like a cat and there’s something amusing about that. A wolf cat.
Stiles, with a face dismembered from his bones and shift across his face. Lips moving like melting wax and those eyes, the brown of earth calling him down and yet all he can taste his dirt.
“Hello ? Anyone at home ?”
He manages a smile, and Stiles’s face shifts back a little, rocking on his heels and they’re piercing his skin with pin pricks.
“Sorry.” He offered a coy smile, and those eyes relax from a burning intensity, and Scott ignores the rising hackles of his wolf.
His mother now. He fixes his eyes to the wavering tree a little past her head, he’d seen her face in the mirror once and he doesn’t want to see it again.
That leaves a sour clench of his stomach but he’s still waiting for their faces to settle.
“Uh - yeah .” Maybe they’re expecting more, he realises a second too late, his own voice detached a little from his ears and her hand is reaching for his arm.
Scott flinches, and Noah Stilinski narrows his eyes. He recognises that look, and remembers to shift a little, but it never had the same effect.
Nothing ever seemed quite as intimidating once you’ve died. He always counts to fifteen minutes to pass the hours. There’s a comfort in that, those fifteen minutes of silence, peace , and maybe he leans into it. It’s more lonely and less.
“Yeah I’m great,” and it sticks to the back of his throat like dry air. He’d learnt to lie properly, but now he didn’t even try, there was little point. Either they heard and listened or they didn’t.
He wasn’t going to tell them. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
A hand finds his lower back as they file into the restaurant, and he doesn’t flinch but a growl rolls to the back of his wind pipe and he feels his muscles tremor under the concentrated effort to keep his claws in.
It felt wrong and right. All their scents were warped. He didn’t want to know their touch.
It’s light. That’s all he can really comprehend. He’d learnt a long time past, to filter out the irrelevant. It’s bright and then the room filters into a glass display of colours and sharpens to figures and their animated motions.
He lets his vision narrow it, and the sounds that stuck his ears with the strength of a scream muffled into the thicket of water and dripped over his head. Even Stiles is talking, and really it’s only his lips moving as they slide into chair. He wants to feel bad that his voice too is muffled.
Imposters , friends . Pack . He should listen.
And then as his fingers are curling round the chair to pull it out a scent catches his tunnelling mind. A figures to his left moves and he notices it, in a way the rest were blurred at the edges.
It tastes like the crunch of leaves beneath a boot, dispersing fragments into the wind, and yet the steady trickle of a stream, the sting of salt and the soothe of water. There’s something musky, like aftershave but twisted, an age that isn’t his age, but a future, and a home.
The scent is familiar and it kills him.
He knows his heart has sped up to his throat, feels his neck snap round without so much as a twinge and his fingers drop away from the chair as he meets the soft blue of his eyes. It’s the blue of cracked ice, shards etched away in slumber and clouds broken to reveal the sky.
He feels his Adam’s apple bob against his skin and steels himself, finding the young, tired creases and thin lips and the quirk of smile in them that had always been aimed at Allison. He tries to keep his mind off Allison.
It’s a second later that he realises — Argent’s face remained unchanged.
They’re stood a few feet apart, and the hunter’s heart is steady and strong, and his face is not the restless image that succumbs the others. His scent is mingled with the future . His Argent.
His mother again, and his legs move between the gap that feels more like the pooling ocean. His mind screaming to stay put, he’s not entirely unaware how strange this will seem, to all onlooking. But he’s craving, his wolf and not just that, he is craving connection.
Argent doesn’t hesitate and Scott doesn’t bother with the pleasantries of politeness and a small alarm ringing that this could most definitely be a trap to lure him in, that they had definitely figured out he wasn’t the Scott they knew, that he was once again in danger and he’d never escape-
His chin bumps into Argent’s jacket, the cool of the leather smoothing across his skin and his fingers are curling into the thick material as his arms wind around his back. He breathes.
“We need to talk,” Chris murmured into his ear, and he feels himself nod, and the arms that don’t trigger something strange across his body, tighten. A hand wraps gently around the nap of his neck and he breathes again, longer, deeper than he needs really.
A noise ruptures at the back of his throat, a yearn, and he doesn’t have the strength to be embarrassed, but it’s quiet enough, muffled enough that over the vacant chatter of the restaurant only a werewolf would have heard.
Given the chance Scott knows he wouldn’t have pulled back. But he’s also acutely aware of his surroundings despite blocking them out, like a sheen between his eyes and the rest of the world. He’s also aware that this is his Argent, but he has boundaries and Scott doesn’t want to overstep.
Three days ago he wouldn’t have worried. Maybe now he worries too much. Did he ever worry enough? She should’ve lived .
He’d stopped thinking about that a long time ago.
His own hand travels up and they’re clasping each other, their foreheads pressed together, allies. friends. pack. The only one he can truly trust. Scott almost wants to cry.
He breathes and doesn’t say anything else until they part properly. The whole thing seemed to have run on for minutes and hours, but Scott knows without looking the exchange would have been a minute at most.
“Thanks,” and he gives a nod down to the denim, “uh for the jacket.”
Chris smiled and gave his shoulder another squeeze. Scott didn’t feel so obscure in his own body.
Scott wondered if his eyes bled emotions the same way his heart did. Like the wine of water and oceans and stars seeping from the sky in lines of crystal tears.
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