Lydia lifts one eyebrow at Stiles and he narrows his own eyes at her. “Don’t think I don’t know about you and Cora pooling your intimidation tactics with each other,” he says accusingly because he knows all. “And you two are practically puppies compared to Derek’s eyebrows of doom so don’t even try that with me. I am immune.”
Her eyebrow falls to a normal position and she stares at him in disbelief. “Did you just call me a puppy?” she asks blankly. “A puppy, Stiles?”
Stiles blanches and reels back, arms flailing, until he’s halfway across the diner bench and pressed against Scott. He forgets sometimes that Lydia is absolutely terrifying and, it doesn’t matter how many times it happens, he never quite manages to remember that she will always be the iciest ice queen to ever ice. Scott side-eyes him with fond exasperation before nudging him back into the seat and leaning into Isaac’s side again. Isaac cranes around Scott to smirk at Stiles.
“Worst best friend ever, Scott,” Stiles hisses as Lydia continues to stare. Scott’s expression turns wounded and Stiles points at him, refusing to bow to the puppy dog eyes, and repeats himself. “Worst best friend ever. Also, Lahey, I am going to burn every single scarf you own.”
“Leave Isaac’s scarves alone, Stiles,” Allison says absently from beside Lydia. She’s reassembling her burger carefully because she always forgets to order it with no onion. “It’s been over a year. You really need to get over them.”
Isaac grins, big and bright, and Stiles knows just how fake the innocent act is because Isaac is pure evil. Sometimes he wonders what would happen if he and Lydia got together and then remembers how traumatizing that entire idea is. As well as the fact that Isaac is sleeping with Scott and Allison. Sometimes he forgets about that as well and is traumatized all over again every time. “Don’t hate on the scarves, Stilinski,” Isaac says cheerfully. “Just because I’ve got better fashion sense as well as things to hide.”
Danny snorts quietly and Stiles turns betrayed eyes to him. The look of betrayal quickly turns to an indignant huff. “I’ll have you know that I fully intend to change that this year,” he says and lifts his chin. He likes to imagine it looks as haughty as when Cora or Lydia do it but, then again, he’s well aware of just how wilfully ignorant he can be sometimes. “I have a plan.”
“How many times have I told you, Stiles, just because you’re the opposite of Jackson and he isn’t my type doesn’t mean you’re my-”
He stretches forward and cuts Danny off with a hand over his mouth. “I wasn’t talking about you!” he says and if it comes out as more of a squawk, well, that’s his choice to ignore. “And, for the record, you’d be lucky to have me anyway. I’ve set my sights higher.”
“Are we talking about how Stilinski wants to bone my brother?” Cora asks as she sits down on Danny’s other side. Danny snaps his teeth at Stiles’ hand and he yelps instinctively as he lets go and almost falls off his precarious perch. “Because if we are I have two things to say. One-”
Stiles tries to lunge further and cover her mouth as well, because everything that comes out of Cora’s mouth is pure poison, but Danny’s forearm stops him in his tracks and Cora continues with a smug look. “One, we all know you’ve been pining for him since for-”
“I have n-”
“Yes you have,” Lydia cuts him off brusquely. He’s going to die for the puppy comment, he just knows it. “Your denial is pathetic and gives me indigestion just thinking about it.”
“And two,” Cora continues as though she’d never been interrupted and Stiles glares at her. “Two, I highly doubt this plan is going to be any better than the one you came up with last spring break.”
“That was kind of hilarious,” Scott says. He doesn’t even bother shooting an apologetic look at Stiles and Stiles decides that Scott is fired as his best friend for this.
“You’re a traitor to the realm,” he informs Scott seriously before stabbing at his fries and imagining that they’re tiny little werewolves. “And, for all of your information, this plan is approximately forty two times more likely to succeed than the Spring Break fiasco.”
“Fiasco?” Cora snorts and Lydia hides a ladylike giggle behind her hand. Scott and Isaac muffle their laughter in a disgustingly adorable snuggle that makes Stiles want to find some wolfsbane, dip his fork in it, and stab them in the face. Allison and Danny don’t bother hiding it, laughing unabashedly at him, and he hates all of them. “Stiles, that was more than a fiasco. He thought you were possessed and hauled you to Deaton.”
“You are all awful, horrible people,” he announces and stands up to leave. It takes him longer than he’d like to scramble out of the booth and takes away from the gravity of his dramatic exit. “I want you to take a long hard look at your lives and choices and get back to me when you see the error of your ways. In the meantime, I’m going to go and find Boyd and Erica. They’re better people than you.”
“Enjoy Boyd’s silent judgment and Erica’s scathing critique of your romancing skills,” Isaac says loftily. “They share our opinions.”
Stiles reaches over to his abandoned plate and takes the last handful of curly fries. He chews them angrily as he turns on his heel and leaves the diner. He has the worst friends on the face of the planet, he swears to God. “They’ll admit defeat when I end up with Derek,” he mutters to himself as he crosses the street and heads towards the Jeep. There is a vicious kind of satisfaction in the knowledge that he didn’t leave any money for the bill. “They’ll eat their words and I hope they taste like the tears of orphans.”
His phone buzzes in his pocket a moment later as he fumbles the key into the ignition.
From: heinous bitch
I bathe in the tears of orphans. That’s why my skin is so fabulous.
“You’re a horrible person, Cora,” he says seriously and stares back in the window to see the entire table laughing. “I’m going to trap you in mountain ash and wax poetic about your brother’s dick when this works, you just wait. It’s going to be glorious and I’m going to talk about it for hours and you aren’t going to be able to get away from it.”
He takes a vicious satisfaction in the way Cora and Isaac choke on their mouthfuls of food and Scott falls backwards off his seat because Isaac is too busy choking to steady him. The Jeep engine probably drowns out his snickering but he doesn’t care.
