Build the Castle Sideways (gift for roslindi)
Title: Build the Castle Sideways
Author: espressopotluck
Recipient: roslindi
Pairings: Erica/Boyd, Stiles/Derek
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5940
Warnings: Mild language
Summary: Erica finds herself being given a strange role in the pack that she doesn't understand and isn't sure that she wants.
Author's Notes: roslindi, I tried to include several things from your sign-up, so be on the lookout for Erica as a main character, platonic bedsharing, mates, and pack dynamics. ♥ Thanks to S for the beta read!
She really thought she'd had enough nightmare fodder. She thought she'd gotten off clean, that spending hours strapped to the ceiling in the Argents' basement wasn't going to keep her up anymore than she already was, that being broken at the hands of the Alpha pack as a message to Derek wasn't going to leave residual damage.
As with most assumptions Erica had about her life, she was wrong.
It's hard to go home now. Erica feels awful when she does spend time with her mother, an awkward breakfast with lukewarm eggs and pulpy orange juice. She can't tell her anything about most of what's been going on with her life - oh, sure, Mom, I'm a werewolf now, how are things at the office? doesn't really cut it. Part of her is screaming to confide in her mother. Part of her wants to curl up in her mother's lap and let her mother stroke her hair like she used to do when Erica was little and had been afraid of the monsters in her closet, only now Erica is the monster in her closet, and she's terrified that what little humanity she had left has been zapped out of her by Gerard's electrical mutilations.
She spends a lot of time at Derek's place, instead, because there isn't anywhere else for her to go. She's not alone; the others are there, too. Isaac has less than she has, and Erica tries to remember that. It's hard when she wakes screaming at the ceiling, covered in a cold sweat, remembering the way the Alphas laughed over her as they dug their nails deep into her skin just to watch her bleed.
Being a werewolf was supposed to fix things. Being a werewolf was supposed to be about power and agility and changing the parts of her life that left her pissing herself on the floor of the school between rows of desks dotted with wads of chewed gum.
Erica tries to keep quiet in the Hale house, pressing a fist into her teeth and holding it there in hopes of muffling her cries. Being a werewolf isn't really all it's cracked up to be.
--
The problem with spending most of her time at the Hale house meant that she goes without a lot of things she used to take for granted; Derek had never sprung for household furnishings. Boyd had brought over his hot plate, but that is the extent of their kitchen utensils, and on mornings when Erica hasn't slept for more than a few hours, she wishes someone had thought to get a coffee maker.
It's July before they know it, the weather turning warm and almost sticky.
"Pack meeting," Derek says, without a greeting. They haven't had one in awhile, which was strange - the Alpha pack is literally on their doorstep, and they should have struck by now, only they haven't. They let Erica and Boyd limp back mottled with bruises that should have healed and didn't, laced with lingering chemicals that align with the pain sensors in the brain.
Erica knows about the brain; her life has revolved around her own. She knows about memory imprints, too, and how she's exhibiting signs of post-traumatic stress disorder when she hears certain sounds and suddenly, she's back in Gerard's basement again. She isn't really sure she should say anything about it, because Derek isn't one for heart-to-heart's, and so she doesn't.
She's also aware that keeping things from her Alpha is probably what is making her wolf instincts stand on edge, angry and raw and unable to coexist.
"The whole pack?" she asks.
She needn't have asked - the humans follow Scott inside the house, trailing behind him like they have no doubts about being included. With Jackson gone to his grandparents' estate in Connecticut, the pack seems quiet and oddly balanced. Even with the rest of them there - Lydia popping her gum and texting on her phone, Peter standing at the side of the room with his arms crossed, Stiles running his mouth about some video game he beat last night - something still feels a little off.
Erica presses the heel of her palms against her eyes and just wishes the sensation would go away. Pack bonds are something she doesn't understand, and sorting out where the anomalous sensation is originating from would take more focus and patience than her sleepless nights have been allowing her.
"I'm just saying, I think we should be focusing on the Alpha pack," Scott says. He's screwing up his forehead in the way he does when he's thinking about something, the way that always seems to be vaguely painful.
"We are," Derek says. Shuts him down. Derek's got a heavy-handed leadership method, and it tends to create more sullen sulks than foster pack relations. "But the best way to be ready for the Alpha pack is to be the best pack we can be. We have to be ready for them."
"We're already training every day," Isaac moans.
Across the room, Boyd's gaze meets hers.
"Then we train harder," Derek grits out. It comes out all growl and snarl, way harder than it should. Erica wants to be angry at the awful vibrations it's sending through the pack's web, but she's just too tired to summon the emotion.
Isaac looks about ready to argue, glancing at Scott for confirmation - and that's the worst thing that could happen, having Scott try to tell Derek that his plans aren't working. Scott's such a wild card that Erica is never quite sure where he stands with the pack. Lydia and Stiles are more pack than Scott, who stands at all times with one foot in and one foot positioned to bolt.
Boyd is nodding, like she should say something, and Erica just can't, not with the bone-deep weariness that feels like sand behind her eyes.
Stiles does, instead. "I think Derek's right about the training," he says, in a way that sounds apologetic and tactful at the same time, "but maybe if we altered the training a bit."
"Altered?" Derek asks. Stiles' head is still attached to his body, and all Derek's wearing is a slight frown, which is better than what would have resulted had Scott said the same thing.
"Well, it's not all just about strength," Stiles says, and fidgets on the arm of the couch. "I mean, there's other stuff involved with fighting. Strategy and teamwork and stuff. Trust me, it's totally a thing - and really necessary when organizing raids on strongholds or, I don't know, rogue Alpha packs."
"This isn't an MMORG," Scott tries, slowly.
Lydia snorts a bit, and doesn't look up from her phone. "He's right." She ignores Stiles' gleeful fist pump into the air. "You guys need a strategy more than you need combat training, particularly with just each other. You have to learn how to hunt together and move together. You're pack, but you don't really fight like it."
Derek nods. "Okay."
"Okay?" Stiles repeats, like he's confused. Erica doesn't blame him. "Okay, like in, we'll try some more training styles?"
"Yes, okay," Derek says, and sighs.
When the meeting breaks up, Derek pulls Erica aside.
"I want you to come up with some drills," he says.
"What?" she asks.
"For the training," Derek explains. "Come up with some ideas for exercises that will test tracking and pack-hunting abilities, focusing on strategy and defense."
Erica is so stunned that she can't figure out how to make her mouth work for several moments. Finally, as Derek is looking at her with something very close to exasperation, she manages, "O...kay?"
"Good."
And then he's gone, leaving Erica bewildered and feeling a bit overwhelmed.
--
Things are strange at home.
It feels odd to be back - odd to be fighting with her mother over leaving her hair products in the bathroom, when there are so many other things to be talking about. Erica spends less and less time there, finding excuses to leave. Somewhere, she thinks that her mother is relieved, relieved to have Erica out of the house, relieved that Erica is no longer shutting herself in her room for fear of another seizure where people can see her.
Part of Erica wants to tell her mother the truth, but there's no way to do it. She stays at Derek's, at the subway station, even though it's cold and uncomfortable - until Derek gets a few beds set up at the Hale house, and they can stay there as it gets closer to full moon time.
They all have their own rooms - shells, really, with walls that barely hold themselves up, but there are cots there, and in Derek's eyes, this most likely constitutes a "room." Erica lays awake on her own rumpled pile of sheets, staring up at the ceiling. She wonders who lived in this room before - before the fire, before all the death. Maybe it was a child; maybe it was Derek's sister. It turns her stomach to think about the screams that still resound throughout the house's walls.
With goose bumps prickling up and down her arms, she gets up and slinks out to the hall. Derek's room is open and empty, and she doesn't know where he is, but Boyd's door is shut and there's no light streaming from beneath it. She presses her palm against it, wanting something solid. Boyd was there for her when the Alphas came down, when the Argents turned on them. Boyd was always there, and Erica is craving the contact.
She knows he wakes when she pushes the door open, but he doesn't stir. He probably smelled her scent as she was outside the door trying to figure out what to do.
When Erica reaches the side of the cot, the too-small mattress, Boyd rolls over and lifts the blankets up, just enough - enough for her to slide in and find the lingering warmth on the sheets there.
"Can't sleep?" he asks, softly, gruff, like maybe he really was asleep before she arrived.
"There's too much here," she tells him. His pillows - there are two, stacked atop each other, and Erica has to tug one of them free - are softer than hers. Maybe it's her imagination. "Too much shit went down."
She can't see his face in the dark, just the lines that make up the edges, even with her wolf senses. But she can feel his heartbeat, can hear it beating steadily against his ribs.
"There's always too much," he says, and she isn't sure what he means.
She stays there. For the first time in a while, she sleeps soundly.
--
At the next pack meeting, she's frazzled and anxious, and Stiles finds her in the small tunnel just off the main crumpling cavern in the subway station.
"Why are you hiding back here?" he asks, hands shoved into his hoodie.
"I'm not hiding," Erica replies, irritated, because even if she wanted to hide, it's impossible with so many other wolves and her Alpha talking just on the other side of the cement wall. "I'm just thinking."
"Thinking about hiding?" Stiles asks; there's a little grin there, at the corners of his mouth.
Her growl would have more bite to it if he wasn't half right. "Go away," she tries instead. It rarely works with Stiles - this time is no different. He stays where he is, looking at her with an expression she isn't sure she likes.
"Listen," he starts, and his fingers slide free from the sweatshirt, "I know Derek gave you this daunting task-"
"It's not daunting," she mumbles, and Stiles continues like she didn't say anything at all.
"-but I've been working on some stuff for the pack anyway, and if you'd like, I could help you out."
Erica raises her head, something a lot like relief bubbling up in her chest. It feels warm and fizzy, sort of like the dizzying first taste of champagne. "Why would you do that for me?"
He shrugs. "We're pack," he says. "And like I said, I was doing stuff anyway. I can help you, and you can show everything to Derek. Everybody wins."
"Okay," Erica says. She takes a deep breath; finally, she feels less pressure on her shoulders, bearing down by the metric ton. "Yeah, okay."
--
'Come up with some defense exercises' turns into 'take over decorating the house so it's livable' and Erica has no idea why these tasks are continually being given to her when Isaac spends a lot of time moping about having nothing to do (which means he spends more time following Scott around). She's only lucky that Stiles volunteers to help with that, too, and picks her up in the Jeep one morning for a trip into the city.
"You know, this may surprise you, but I've never really cared much about interior decorating," Erica grumbles. IKEA is a daunting, oddly claustrophobic place to be.
"What part of that was supposed to surprise me?"
She picks up a strange oval-shaped sconce and tests the weight, briefly contemplating throwing it at Stiles' head. "I could snap you like a twig over that bed frame," she warns.
"Yeah, but I think they have a 'You break it, you buy it' rule here, and don't want to go home with me. I'd clash with all the curtains," Stiles tells her; it's the shit-eating grin on his face that does her in. She remembers the way her heart used to flip up and then fall down to her stomach when he pulled that face during class, joking with Scott and harassing the teachers.
She puts the sconce down.
"Sometimes, I wonder how you do it," she says.
"Do what?" he asks. He's putting something green into the basket and she decides it's better just to avoid looking, so she doesn't know what they will eventually be walking out with. Nothing should come in that shade of green.
"Make jokes," she replies. "Stay so... normal. I mean, how many times have you almost died?"
He shrugs. "Almost being the operative word there."
"Yeah, but." She stops, trails off, and runs her fingers across the top of a small bedside table that costs more than three months of her medication had. "You know what I mean. How do you stay so okay with things?"
"You laugh," he tells her. "It's way better than the alternative."
Erica narrows her eyes, catching a hint of something on the air.
"It's your shield," she says, slowly, tasting the words like the emotions hanging between them.
"This werewolf smelling thing is still super creepy, by the way."
"All this crap, it's all fake," she continues.
Stiles frowns, looking down at the basket in his hands. "Not all of it. Most of it is half-truths."
"Are you ever really happy?" Erica asks.
He shrugs again. He looks a little lost this time.
"I could be," he says. "Maybe. Someday."
"Someday," she repeats, and thinks of shared warmth beneath a thin layer of blankets.
--
Her room gets used less and less; she finds that she sleeps better next to Boyd, feeling the heat that radiates post-transformation and being calmed by it. There's something nice about knowing that whenever she needs it, there's someone who will be there for her. There's someone who knows her, all the way down to the parts that transform beneath the full moon, and this person accepts her the way she is - she's never had that before.
Boyd knows about her seizures, about the embarrassing things that the kids at school would say and do.
"Did you feel sorry for me?" she asks, one night, as they are both still awake and entwined, staring out the window at the half-moon hanging in the night sky.
"No," he says - she's glad. "Did you ever wish you could be someone else?"
Erica feels his hand move on her waist, fingers that are solid and grounding; she takes a deep breath, because she feels strangely, oddly vulnerable. "Yes," she admits. "Every day. And now I am."
"No, you aren't," Boyd tells her. "You're just the same person you always were, with a new facet."
"A fixed person."
His hand tightens, almost like he's afraid of something.
"There was nothing to fix," he says. "There was nothing wrong with you."
"I had epilepsy," Erica says, with more force than is necessary. "I was ugly. I was weak."
"No, you weren't," he replies.
The shape of the moon on the other side of the glass blurs when the tears prick her eyes; they hurt, in a way, like an admission. And for some reason, it doesn't bother her when they leak out and run rivulets down her cheeks, leaving little damp spots on the pillow. It doesn't feel so bad to fall because she knows there will be someone there to catch her, even the parts of her that she wishes she could cut completely out.
--
"I don't want this," she says, frustrated and tired, bent over the schematics of the woods surrounding the Hale house, after a pack training session that already left her tired and weary. "I don't know why I'm even doing this."
"Because Derek told you to," Stiles answers. He's drawing circles and lines, intersecting points and bits that converge on each other - she'd never be able to think these things up on her own, but when Stiles draws them and explains, she gets it. They're good, and he's good, and this should be his job, not hers.
She growls, a bit, with nowhere to vent her frustrations. "He can do it himself."
"Derek's more offense than defense," Stiles laughs.
That's true. "I still don't know why I have to do this," Erica says, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Maybe he's finally learned to delegate," Stiles says, and shrugs.
--
There's something I think you need to see, Stiles' text says a few days later, sent in the early part of the morning that Erica wasn't sure he was even acquainted with. When she sends back a question in response, all she gets is the link to something online: something on Google scholar, something that looks like it could be for a school report, only it's the middle of summer and Erica doesn't think Stiles is sending her pre-emptive homework help.
It takes awhile for her to get away and find a place where she can access it. She isn't even sure why she feels the pressing need to be alone while doing it - she doesn't know what it is, but the weight of Stiles' message, cryptic and vague, is so heavy on her shoulders that she gets only a few blocks before going into a coffee house. Her phone isn't the best screen to read fine print on, but it'll do, and there's free Wi-Fi.
The barista brings her a cappuccino as Erica pulls up the link's contents. Dominant Hierarchy and Roles Within Non-Captive Wolf Packs.
She reads the whole thing. She sits for so long that several customers seem annoyed by the fact that she's taking up a whole table and her iPhone battery runs low; even then, she stays there, and her cappuccino is largely untouched. She wants to text Stiles back, because she knows, and she can't get herself to do it. Midway through the second re-read, her phone beeps twice and turns itself off, and she doesn't even need to complete the re-read because she knows what the article said.
She feels like she's climbing the rock wall in gym again, waiting for her muscles to go slack and loose and then rigid, for her brain to go into nothing as her vision goes black. She feels the familiar tang of bitter, copper blood at the back of her throat, and for the first time, it's not because of a seizure. The wolf is restless and anxious, unhappy.
She feels less in control than she did when the seizures were contorting her body on a manic, anguished schedule.
--
She meets with Stiles. She isn't even sure why. They sit in a park on awkward, uncomfortable benches, and she isn't even sure how long they sit there in silence. There's something about the exquisiteness of misery, the abject loneliness of it; it makes one able to see it on other people, too. It's something that people write sad ballads on guitars about, and Erica feels like she'll throw up just thinking about lyrics talking about the beautiful agony of it all.
There's really nothing beautiful about it.
"Did you know?" she asks, finally, after what feels like half a lifetime. Stiles' hands are knit in his lap, fingers twisted together. He looks like someone barely holding it together. He looks like someone who's lost everything only to lose it all again, where he knew the pain the second time around and did it anyway, only to be surprised by the same result. "I mean, before you read the article."
"No," Stiles says. He doesn't elaborate.
"Would you have helped me, if you'd known?"
Stiles takes a long while to answer, teeth chewing on his bottom lip. Erica can see the indentations being left there, the small dips that first grow pale and then fill rapidly with blood again.
"It's pack," he says, finally, which really isn't an answer at all, and Erica can't fault him for it.
"Pack is important," Erica agrees.
"Yeah."
Erica used to think that sharing misery halved it. That sharing the awful, sickening, gut-wrenching anguish somehow made it easier to bear. But there are two broken hearts sitting on the park benches, and she thinks it just makes everything ten times worse.
--
That night, Erica goes back late. Everyone is asleep, and she's glad for it. She can feel them through the pack web, the distinguishable feelings that flow through her veins and keep her connected to the others. She wonders if that will get stronger, or more meaningful.
She stays outside Boyd's door for a long while with her palm pressed against the frame. Finally, she opens the door and goes in - he doesn't stir, at least not that she can see. He does wake a bit as she pulls the covers back and climbs into bed next to him. The bed smells like him: safe and warm and comfortable. It's almost soothing enough for her frazzled nerves to lay flat.
He turns over and curls an arm around her waist, and Erica lets her hand slide down to lace their fingers together. In the moonlight, she can see the contrast of their skin. Boyd's is deep and rich, like the shadows they run in, and hers has taken on a blue hue. Together, they look like an oil painting, like bold colors spread over a canvas.
It's all she can do to keep from shaking, from losing it right there. She brings their joined hands to her face and presses a kiss against his knuckles. He doesn't say anything - he doesn't push. He noses into her shoulder, between tendrils of hair that have fallen between their forms, and sighs. Maybe he knows. Maybe he's always known, and didn't say anything.
He holds her when she cries into the pillow. His fingers stay where they are, squeezing reassurance into her palms, and even at the bottom, when she was laying on the hospital beds wondering what was wrong with her, and if she'd ever be like the other kids, Erica still hadn't felt like she'd been losing quite so much.
--
He doesn't have to say anything, she can see it in his eyes.
As they sit hunched over the table that seems wildly out of place in the house, there's nothing but silence. He's always been able to get her without having to say anything. Erica likes to think that they would have found each other anyway, even if they hadn't been pack - even if they hadn't been strung up in Gerard's basement together being fed volts of electricity. Maybe they'd have met in the halls, the girl with epilepsy and the boy who had no friends.
Boyd's eyes are full of things that keep Erica from choking down any of her breakfast. She waits for Derek to come down, growing angrier and angrier. This isn't what being a werewolf was supposed to be. This isn't what becoming a werewolf was supposed to do - it was supposed to give her options, not strip them from her.
When he finally does, Erica nearly breaks one of the table legs when she pushes off it because she's so angry.
"We need to talk," she says, firmly, and doesn't give Derek any chance to argue. She's earned that. She stalks outside and somehow, mercifully, Derek follows.
She whirls on him with her hands balled into tight fists at her sides. "You're training me to be Alpha female," she says.
"Yes," Derek replies. He sounds confused. He sounds like she should have known, like it wasn't a secret.
"You're training me to be your mate."
This time, the response time is slower. "Yes," he repeats, and there's a measured nod.
"And you didn't tell me," Erica says.
"I thought you knew."
He's telling the truth. Boyd knew; he had to have known. Erica's so angry that her heart is jumping in her chest, pressing fast and hard against her ribcage.
"Why?" she manages to grit out.
"Because the pack needs it," Derek tells her. "Because the strongest way to be a cohesive unit is to be a cohesive pack. Because we have to be as strong as we can be to beat the Alphas."
"Because I was the only option," Erica says, and when Derek flinches, she knows she's hit on the real heart of the matter. She doesn't even care - it should bother her that she's the choice by default, that it didn't come from her abilities or her strength.
She sucks in a stinging breath. "Would it have been Lydia?"
"It can't be Lydia," Derek says, easily, but Erica knows it would have been. Lydia is smart and quick and clever, and she carries herself with an air of confidence that Erica, despite her best efforts, can't quite replicate. And even knowing this, even understanding this, Erica still doesn't care. In her own skin, she's finally coming to terms. But she can't be herself and be what Derek wants her to be.
"I don't want this," Erica tells him.
She watches him breathe deeply for a few seconds, listening to the rhythm of his heart.
"I know," Derek says.
"You don't want this, either."
He shakes his head when he says, "It doesn't matter what I want. The pack needs this."
"The pack needs us to be happy, not forced into something that you think will make them stronger," she snaps. "How is this going to help? You want it to be a magic fix-all, but it's not like that. We're not like that."
"This is how packs become bonded-"
"Oh, shut up," Erica cuts him off. She thinks she's earned that, too. "It doesn't work like that."
She's making him angry. She can feel it through the web before she sees it flash in his eyes, red and feral. "I think I know more than you do," he growls. "This is the life I was born to."
"And that's why you don't get it," she says.
He deflates. Somewhere, she struck a chord, and she should feel more pleased about that then she does. She just feels tired.
She raises her arms to either side, holds her hands out, palms skyward. "Look at your pack."
"What do you mean?" he asks.
"Derek, look at us. This isn't what you were born into. Our pack is already different from everything else you've known. You killed your uncle and then he came back to life and he's still here. One of your wolves used to be a giant lizard who murdered people. Scott's closer to being an Omega than being your Beta. You have humans who are just as much pack as me and Boyd are."
He doesn't say anything, and Erica lowers her arms. She knows the others are watching from the window - she can feel Peter's gaze on her, Boyd's quiet discontent, Isaac's uncertainty.
"The pack needs an Alpha female," Derek says, again, and it's so much quieter this time. Erica can't even summon the anger at him anymore. He was trying. He was trying to do what he'd been bred to do, and he was trying to emulate the only method he'd ever known. He was just so bad at it.
"I know," Erica replies. "But you are so stuck in trying to do things properly that you fail to see the option to do things right."
The question is written all over his face when he raises his eyes to look at her again.
"It should be Stiles," she says.
"No," Derek responds, immediate.
Erica shakes her head at him; through the web, she can feel the others in the pack, and their tenuous, humming approval. This is what the pack wants. She wants to be happy, and so do they.
"He's way better at this shit than I am," she admits with a shrug.
"He's human," Derek says, and it sounds so desperate.
"Derek," Erica sighs. "At some point, you have to let go of all this bullshit you believe the pack is supposed to be. You can't fit us into a mold, and I think that's why it's not working."
He says nothing, so she continues, "And you can't... you can't try to make someone your mate. That isn't how it works."
"But it needs to be a wolf," Derek says. It sounds like he's run ragged, like there's little left holding him together. "This is the pack."
"Dude," Erica says, and sighs. "You're such a guy sometimes."
He looks at her in question, face vulnerable and unhappy.
"You can't be logical about this," she tells him. "This isn't logic. It's just... feelings. It's human. I think it's the most human thing we've got."
He laughs. It's not a happy sound. She doesn't know how she's managed to make him sound so wrecked, but the Derek standing in front of her now seems so, so much smaller. Younger and less sure. With his shields stripped away, there's painfully little too him, and Erica's wolf is whining in response.
"This is why," he says, running his tongue over his bottom lip, "you would have made a good Alpha female."
"I know," she replies, and lets herself grin at him. "But it was never meant to be me. I think..." She shrugs again, swallowing back her own laughter, "I think it was always him anyway, to begin with."
"They're going to tear us apart," Derek says.
Erica smiles again, risking a glance at the window. Peter is gone, and Isaac has his nose pressed up against the glass. Boyd is standing next to him, with his palm splayed against the material - her heart skips a bit when he smiles at her. It's a real smile, too, the kind that spreads all the way across his face.
"No, they aren't," she says. "We won't let them."
--
"Do you think wolves mate for life?" Boyd asks, when it's dark and their limbs are tangled up in one another's. His fingers are moving against hers - small, gentle, rhythmic motions, like he's memorizing each tiny twitch of her muscles as she echoes them back.
Erica thinks of the article. "I don't know," she admits. "I don't think it's that much different from everyone else. Maybe finding a mate is just... finding someone who will be compatible."
"It's not very romantic," Boyd says, but it's teasing, and Erica bumps her shoulder against the smooth plane of his chest in response.
"Well, I'm not a very romantic person," Erica replies. She knows he can feel the lie.
--
The next pack meeting is kind of a mess, the beautiful, disorganized sort of chaos that makes Erica feel so at home. She figures after everything she's allowed to grab one of the better sofa seats to sit through it, and Scott brought pizza. Everyone tends to be a little more agreeable when there is sustenance involved.
Halfway through, the discussion about the defenses just sort of dissolves to the point where the pack watches Derek and Stiles argue about which method is going to net the best results in the next training session.
"-because that's actually the worst idea you've ever had."
"How do you know that? You haven't seen all my ideas. In fact, you weren't even present for them, and I'm pretty sure that the time I thought I could fly if I jumped off the deck wearing a sheet-cape was far worse than this one."
"You're babbling to avoid having a reasonable discussion about this."
"No, I'm babbling because you hate it, and because my mind works better when my mouth is spouting off nonsense."
"See, you just admitted that your plan was nonsense."
"You can't prove that's the part of this I was talking about, Derek. My plan is genius. If you'd just let me go over the details, I'm sure the others would agree with me-"
"Don't bring the others into this."
"This isn't a dictatorship, dude. They get a say in these things, too."
"I don't know where you are getting these strange notions from."
"I can't - did you seriously... oh my god, you have got to be kidding. You really are kidding. You just made a joke, didn't you. Derek, what the hell. Were you arguing with me this whole time just to - you were. You are smiling. Oh, come on, are you for real right now?"
Erica leans back into the couch, curling against Boyd's warmth. The pleased buzz through the pack bonds is soothing; her wolf is calm and content, smoothed by the fact that the tension in the web has dissolved. His free hand is on her knee, and the weight of it is wonderful.
"This is never going to get resolved," Boyd murmurs near her ear.
"I know," she agrees. "It's great. Can you grab me a Coke? My hands are covered in pizza grease."
Author: espressopotluck
Recipient: roslindi
Pairings: Erica/Boyd, Stiles/Derek
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5940
Warnings: Mild language
Summary: Erica finds herself being given a strange role in the pack that she doesn't understand and isn't sure that she wants.
Author's Notes: roslindi, I tried to include several things from your sign-up, so be on the lookout for Erica as a main character, platonic bedsharing, mates, and pack dynamics. ♥ Thanks to S for the beta read!
She really thought she'd had enough nightmare fodder. She thought she'd gotten off clean, that spending hours strapped to the ceiling in the Argents' basement wasn't going to keep her up anymore than she already was, that being broken at the hands of the Alpha pack as a message to Derek wasn't going to leave residual damage.
As with most assumptions Erica had about her life, she was wrong.
It's hard to go home now. Erica feels awful when she does spend time with her mother, an awkward breakfast with lukewarm eggs and pulpy orange juice. She can't tell her anything about most of what's been going on with her life - oh, sure, Mom, I'm a werewolf now, how are things at the office? doesn't really cut it. Part of her is screaming to confide in her mother. Part of her wants to curl up in her mother's lap and let her mother stroke her hair like she used to do when Erica was little and had been afraid of the monsters in her closet, only now Erica is the monster in her closet, and she's terrified that what little humanity she had left has been zapped out of her by Gerard's electrical mutilations.
She spends a lot of time at Derek's place, instead, because there isn't anywhere else for her to go. She's not alone; the others are there, too. Isaac has less than she has, and Erica tries to remember that. It's hard when she wakes screaming at the ceiling, covered in a cold sweat, remembering the way the Alphas laughed over her as they dug their nails deep into her skin just to watch her bleed.
Being a werewolf was supposed to fix things. Being a werewolf was supposed to be about power and agility and changing the parts of her life that left her pissing herself on the floor of the school between rows of desks dotted with wads of chewed gum.
Erica tries to keep quiet in the Hale house, pressing a fist into her teeth and holding it there in hopes of muffling her cries. Being a werewolf isn't really all it's cracked up to be.
--
The problem with spending most of her time at the Hale house meant that she goes without a lot of things she used to take for granted; Derek had never sprung for household furnishings. Boyd had brought over his hot plate, but that is the extent of their kitchen utensils, and on mornings when Erica hasn't slept for more than a few hours, she wishes someone had thought to get a coffee maker.
It's July before they know it, the weather turning warm and almost sticky.
"Pack meeting," Derek says, without a greeting. They haven't had one in awhile, which was strange - the Alpha pack is literally on their doorstep, and they should have struck by now, only they haven't. They let Erica and Boyd limp back mottled with bruises that should have healed and didn't, laced with lingering chemicals that align with the pain sensors in the brain.
Erica knows about the brain; her life has revolved around her own. She knows about memory imprints, too, and how she's exhibiting signs of post-traumatic stress disorder when she hears certain sounds and suddenly, she's back in Gerard's basement again. She isn't really sure she should say anything about it, because Derek isn't one for heart-to-heart's, and so she doesn't.
She's also aware that keeping things from her Alpha is probably what is making her wolf instincts stand on edge, angry and raw and unable to coexist.
"The whole pack?" she asks.
She needn't have asked - the humans follow Scott inside the house, trailing behind him like they have no doubts about being included. With Jackson gone to his grandparents' estate in Connecticut, the pack seems quiet and oddly balanced. Even with the rest of them there - Lydia popping her gum and texting on her phone, Peter standing at the side of the room with his arms crossed, Stiles running his mouth about some video game he beat last night - something still feels a little off.
Erica presses the heel of her palms against her eyes and just wishes the sensation would go away. Pack bonds are something she doesn't understand, and sorting out where the anomalous sensation is originating from would take more focus and patience than her sleepless nights have been allowing her.
"I'm just saying, I think we should be focusing on the Alpha pack," Scott says. He's screwing up his forehead in the way he does when he's thinking about something, the way that always seems to be vaguely painful.
"We are," Derek says. Shuts him down. Derek's got a heavy-handed leadership method, and it tends to create more sullen sulks than foster pack relations. "But the best way to be ready for the Alpha pack is to be the best pack we can be. We have to be ready for them."
"We're already training every day," Isaac moans.
Across the room, Boyd's gaze meets hers.
"Then we train harder," Derek grits out. It comes out all growl and snarl, way harder than it should. Erica wants to be angry at the awful vibrations it's sending through the pack's web, but she's just too tired to summon the emotion.
Isaac looks about ready to argue, glancing at Scott for confirmation - and that's the worst thing that could happen, having Scott try to tell Derek that his plans aren't working. Scott's such a wild card that Erica is never quite sure where he stands with the pack. Lydia and Stiles are more pack than Scott, who stands at all times with one foot in and one foot positioned to bolt.
Boyd is nodding, like she should say something, and Erica just can't, not with the bone-deep weariness that feels like sand behind her eyes.
Stiles does, instead. "I think Derek's right about the training," he says, in a way that sounds apologetic and tactful at the same time, "but maybe if we altered the training a bit."
"Altered?" Derek asks. Stiles' head is still attached to his body, and all Derek's wearing is a slight frown, which is better than what would have resulted had Scott said the same thing.
"Well, it's not all just about strength," Stiles says, and fidgets on the arm of the couch. "I mean, there's other stuff involved with fighting. Strategy and teamwork and stuff. Trust me, it's totally a thing - and really necessary when organizing raids on strongholds or, I don't know, rogue Alpha packs."
"This isn't an MMORG," Scott tries, slowly.
Lydia snorts a bit, and doesn't look up from her phone. "He's right." She ignores Stiles' gleeful fist pump into the air. "You guys need a strategy more than you need combat training, particularly with just each other. You have to learn how to hunt together and move together. You're pack, but you don't really fight like it."
Derek nods. "Okay."
"Okay?" Stiles repeats, like he's confused. Erica doesn't blame him. "Okay, like in, we'll try some more training styles?"
"Yes, okay," Derek says, and sighs.
When the meeting breaks up, Derek pulls Erica aside.
"I want you to come up with some drills," he says.
"What?" she asks.
"For the training," Derek explains. "Come up with some ideas for exercises that will test tracking and pack-hunting abilities, focusing on strategy and defense."
Erica is so stunned that she can't figure out how to make her mouth work for several moments. Finally, as Derek is looking at her with something very close to exasperation, she manages, "O...kay?"
"Good."
And then he's gone, leaving Erica bewildered and feeling a bit overwhelmed.
--
Things are strange at home.
It feels odd to be back - odd to be fighting with her mother over leaving her hair products in the bathroom, when there are so many other things to be talking about. Erica spends less and less time there, finding excuses to leave. Somewhere, she thinks that her mother is relieved, relieved to have Erica out of the house, relieved that Erica is no longer shutting herself in her room for fear of another seizure where people can see her.
Part of Erica wants to tell her mother the truth, but there's no way to do it. She stays at Derek's, at the subway station, even though it's cold and uncomfortable - until Derek gets a few beds set up at the Hale house, and they can stay there as it gets closer to full moon time.
They all have their own rooms - shells, really, with walls that barely hold themselves up, but there are cots there, and in Derek's eyes, this most likely constitutes a "room." Erica lays awake on her own rumpled pile of sheets, staring up at the ceiling. She wonders who lived in this room before - before the fire, before all the death. Maybe it was a child; maybe it was Derek's sister. It turns her stomach to think about the screams that still resound throughout the house's walls.
With goose bumps prickling up and down her arms, she gets up and slinks out to the hall. Derek's room is open and empty, and she doesn't know where he is, but Boyd's door is shut and there's no light streaming from beneath it. She presses her palm against it, wanting something solid. Boyd was there for her when the Alphas came down, when the Argents turned on them. Boyd was always there, and Erica is craving the contact.
She knows he wakes when she pushes the door open, but he doesn't stir. He probably smelled her scent as she was outside the door trying to figure out what to do.
When Erica reaches the side of the cot, the too-small mattress, Boyd rolls over and lifts the blankets up, just enough - enough for her to slide in and find the lingering warmth on the sheets there.
"Can't sleep?" he asks, softly, gruff, like maybe he really was asleep before she arrived.
"There's too much here," she tells him. His pillows - there are two, stacked atop each other, and Erica has to tug one of them free - are softer than hers. Maybe it's her imagination. "Too much shit went down."
She can't see his face in the dark, just the lines that make up the edges, even with her wolf senses. But she can feel his heartbeat, can hear it beating steadily against his ribs.
"There's always too much," he says, and she isn't sure what he means.
She stays there. For the first time in a while, she sleeps soundly.
--
At the next pack meeting, she's frazzled and anxious, and Stiles finds her in the small tunnel just off the main crumpling cavern in the subway station.
"Why are you hiding back here?" he asks, hands shoved into his hoodie.
"I'm not hiding," Erica replies, irritated, because even if she wanted to hide, it's impossible with so many other wolves and her Alpha talking just on the other side of the cement wall. "I'm just thinking."
"Thinking about hiding?" Stiles asks; there's a little grin there, at the corners of his mouth.
Her growl would have more bite to it if he wasn't half right. "Go away," she tries instead. It rarely works with Stiles - this time is no different. He stays where he is, looking at her with an expression she isn't sure she likes.
"Listen," he starts, and his fingers slide free from the sweatshirt, "I know Derek gave you this daunting task-"
"It's not daunting," she mumbles, and Stiles continues like she didn't say anything at all.
"-but I've been working on some stuff for the pack anyway, and if you'd like, I could help you out."
Erica raises her head, something a lot like relief bubbling up in her chest. It feels warm and fizzy, sort of like the dizzying first taste of champagne. "Why would you do that for me?"
He shrugs. "We're pack," he says. "And like I said, I was doing stuff anyway. I can help you, and you can show everything to Derek. Everybody wins."
"Okay," Erica says. She takes a deep breath; finally, she feels less pressure on her shoulders, bearing down by the metric ton. "Yeah, okay."
--
'Come up with some defense exercises' turns into 'take over decorating the house so it's livable' and Erica has no idea why these tasks are continually being given to her when Isaac spends a lot of time moping about having nothing to do (which means he spends more time following Scott around). She's only lucky that Stiles volunteers to help with that, too, and picks her up in the Jeep one morning for a trip into the city.
"You know, this may surprise you, but I've never really cared much about interior decorating," Erica grumbles. IKEA is a daunting, oddly claustrophobic place to be.
"What part of that was supposed to surprise me?"
She picks up a strange oval-shaped sconce and tests the weight, briefly contemplating throwing it at Stiles' head. "I could snap you like a twig over that bed frame," she warns.
"Yeah, but I think they have a 'You break it, you buy it' rule here, and don't want to go home with me. I'd clash with all the curtains," Stiles tells her; it's the shit-eating grin on his face that does her in. She remembers the way her heart used to flip up and then fall down to her stomach when he pulled that face during class, joking with Scott and harassing the teachers.
She puts the sconce down.
"Sometimes, I wonder how you do it," she says.
"Do what?" he asks. He's putting something green into the basket and she decides it's better just to avoid looking, so she doesn't know what they will eventually be walking out with. Nothing should come in that shade of green.
"Make jokes," she replies. "Stay so... normal. I mean, how many times have you almost died?"
He shrugs. "Almost being the operative word there."
"Yeah, but." She stops, trails off, and runs her fingers across the top of a small bedside table that costs more than three months of her medication had. "You know what I mean. How do you stay so okay with things?"
"You laugh," he tells her. "It's way better than the alternative."
Erica narrows her eyes, catching a hint of something on the air.
"It's your shield," she says, slowly, tasting the words like the emotions hanging between them.
"This werewolf smelling thing is still super creepy, by the way."
"All this crap, it's all fake," she continues.
Stiles frowns, looking down at the basket in his hands. "Not all of it. Most of it is half-truths."
"Are you ever really happy?" Erica asks.
He shrugs again. He looks a little lost this time.
"I could be," he says. "Maybe. Someday."
"Someday," she repeats, and thinks of shared warmth beneath a thin layer of blankets.
--
Her room gets used less and less; she finds that she sleeps better next to Boyd, feeling the heat that radiates post-transformation and being calmed by it. There's something nice about knowing that whenever she needs it, there's someone who will be there for her. There's someone who knows her, all the way down to the parts that transform beneath the full moon, and this person accepts her the way she is - she's never had that before.
Boyd knows about her seizures, about the embarrassing things that the kids at school would say and do.
"Did you feel sorry for me?" she asks, one night, as they are both still awake and entwined, staring out the window at the half-moon hanging in the night sky.
"No," he says - she's glad. "Did you ever wish you could be someone else?"
Erica feels his hand move on her waist, fingers that are solid and grounding; she takes a deep breath, because she feels strangely, oddly vulnerable. "Yes," she admits. "Every day. And now I am."
"No, you aren't," Boyd tells her. "You're just the same person you always were, with a new facet."
"A fixed person."
His hand tightens, almost like he's afraid of something.
"There was nothing to fix," he says. "There was nothing wrong with you."
"I had epilepsy," Erica says, with more force than is necessary. "I was ugly. I was weak."
"No, you weren't," he replies.
The shape of the moon on the other side of the glass blurs when the tears prick her eyes; they hurt, in a way, like an admission. And for some reason, it doesn't bother her when they leak out and run rivulets down her cheeks, leaving little damp spots on the pillow. It doesn't feel so bad to fall because she knows there will be someone there to catch her, even the parts of her that she wishes she could cut completely out.
--
"I don't want this," she says, frustrated and tired, bent over the schematics of the woods surrounding the Hale house, after a pack training session that already left her tired and weary. "I don't know why I'm even doing this."
"Because Derek told you to," Stiles answers. He's drawing circles and lines, intersecting points and bits that converge on each other - she'd never be able to think these things up on her own, but when Stiles draws them and explains, she gets it. They're good, and he's good, and this should be his job, not hers.
She growls, a bit, with nowhere to vent her frustrations. "He can do it himself."
"Derek's more offense than defense," Stiles laughs.
That's true. "I still don't know why I have to do this," Erica says, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Maybe he's finally learned to delegate," Stiles says, and shrugs.
--
There's something I think you need to see, Stiles' text says a few days later, sent in the early part of the morning that Erica wasn't sure he was even acquainted with. When she sends back a question in response, all she gets is the link to something online: something on Google scholar, something that looks like it could be for a school report, only it's the middle of summer and Erica doesn't think Stiles is sending her pre-emptive homework help.
It takes awhile for her to get away and find a place where she can access it. She isn't even sure why she feels the pressing need to be alone while doing it - she doesn't know what it is, but the weight of Stiles' message, cryptic and vague, is so heavy on her shoulders that she gets only a few blocks before going into a coffee house. Her phone isn't the best screen to read fine print on, but it'll do, and there's free Wi-Fi.
The barista brings her a cappuccino as Erica pulls up the link's contents. Dominant Hierarchy and Roles Within Non-Captive Wolf Packs.
She reads the whole thing. She sits for so long that several customers seem annoyed by the fact that she's taking up a whole table and her iPhone battery runs low; even then, she stays there, and her cappuccino is largely untouched. She wants to text Stiles back, because she knows, and she can't get herself to do it. Midway through the second re-read, her phone beeps twice and turns itself off, and she doesn't even need to complete the re-read because she knows what the article said.
She feels like she's climbing the rock wall in gym again, waiting for her muscles to go slack and loose and then rigid, for her brain to go into nothing as her vision goes black. She feels the familiar tang of bitter, copper blood at the back of her throat, and for the first time, it's not because of a seizure. The wolf is restless and anxious, unhappy.
She feels less in control than she did when the seizures were contorting her body on a manic, anguished schedule.
--
She meets with Stiles. She isn't even sure why. They sit in a park on awkward, uncomfortable benches, and she isn't even sure how long they sit there in silence. There's something about the exquisiteness of misery, the abject loneliness of it; it makes one able to see it on other people, too. It's something that people write sad ballads on guitars about, and Erica feels like she'll throw up just thinking about lyrics talking about the beautiful agony of it all.
There's really nothing beautiful about it.
"Did you know?" she asks, finally, after what feels like half a lifetime. Stiles' hands are knit in his lap, fingers twisted together. He looks like someone barely holding it together. He looks like someone who's lost everything only to lose it all again, where he knew the pain the second time around and did it anyway, only to be surprised by the same result. "I mean, before you read the article."
"No," Stiles says. He doesn't elaborate.
"Would you have helped me, if you'd known?"
Stiles takes a long while to answer, teeth chewing on his bottom lip. Erica can see the indentations being left there, the small dips that first grow pale and then fill rapidly with blood again.
"It's pack," he says, finally, which really isn't an answer at all, and Erica can't fault him for it.
"Pack is important," Erica agrees.
"Yeah."
Erica used to think that sharing misery halved it. That sharing the awful, sickening, gut-wrenching anguish somehow made it easier to bear. But there are two broken hearts sitting on the park benches, and she thinks it just makes everything ten times worse.
--
That night, Erica goes back late. Everyone is asleep, and she's glad for it. She can feel them through the pack web, the distinguishable feelings that flow through her veins and keep her connected to the others. She wonders if that will get stronger, or more meaningful.
She stays outside Boyd's door for a long while with her palm pressed against the frame. Finally, she opens the door and goes in - he doesn't stir, at least not that she can see. He does wake a bit as she pulls the covers back and climbs into bed next to him. The bed smells like him: safe and warm and comfortable. It's almost soothing enough for her frazzled nerves to lay flat.
He turns over and curls an arm around her waist, and Erica lets her hand slide down to lace their fingers together. In the moonlight, she can see the contrast of their skin. Boyd's is deep and rich, like the shadows they run in, and hers has taken on a blue hue. Together, they look like an oil painting, like bold colors spread over a canvas.
It's all she can do to keep from shaking, from losing it right there. She brings their joined hands to her face and presses a kiss against his knuckles. He doesn't say anything - he doesn't push. He noses into her shoulder, between tendrils of hair that have fallen between their forms, and sighs. Maybe he knows. Maybe he's always known, and didn't say anything.
He holds her when she cries into the pillow. His fingers stay where they are, squeezing reassurance into her palms, and even at the bottom, when she was laying on the hospital beds wondering what was wrong with her, and if she'd ever be like the other kids, Erica still hadn't felt like she'd been losing quite so much.
--
He doesn't have to say anything, she can see it in his eyes.
As they sit hunched over the table that seems wildly out of place in the house, there's nothing but silence. He's always been able to get her without having to say anything. Erica likes to think that they would have found each other anyway, even if they hadn't been pack - even if they hadn't been strung up in Gerard's basement together being fed volts of electricity. Maybe they'd have met in the halls, the girl with epilepsy and the boy who had no friends.
Boyd's eyes are full of things that keep Erica from choking down any of her breakfast. She waits for Derek to come down, growing angrier and angrier. This isn't what being a werewolf was supposed to be. This isn't what becoming a werewolf was supposed to do - it was supposed to give her options, not strip them from her.
When he finally does, Erica nearly breaks one of the table legs when she pushes off it because she's so angry.
"We need to talk," she says, firmly, and doesn't give Derek any chance to argue. She's earned that. She stalks outside and somehow, mercifully, Derek follows.
She whirls on him with her hands balled into tight fists at her sides. "You're training me to be Alpha female," she says.
"Yes," Derek replies. He sounds confused. He sounds like she should have known, like it wasn't a secret.
"You're training me to be your mate."
This time, the response time is slower. "Yes," he repeats, and there's a measured nod.
"And you didn't tell me," Erica says.
"I thought you knew."
He's telling the truth. Boyd knew; he had to have known. Erica's so angry that her heart is jumping in her chest, pressing fast and hard against her ribcage.
"Why?" she manages to grit out.
"Because the pack needs it," Derek tells her. "Because the strongest way to be a cohesive unit is to be a cohesive pack. Because we have to be as strong as we can be to beat the Alphas."
"Because I was the only option," Erica says, and when Derek flinches, she knows she's hit on the real heart of the matter. She doesn't even care - it should bother her that she's the choice by default, that it didn't come from her abilities or her strength.
She sucks in a stinging breath. "Would it have been Lydia?"
"It can't be Lydia," Derek says, easily, but Erica knows it would have been. Lydia is smart and quick and clever, and she carries herself with an air of confidence that Erica, despite her best efforts, can't quite replicate. And even knowing this, even understanding this, Erica still doesn't care. In her own skin, she's finally coming to terms. But she can't be herself and be what Derek wants her to be.
"I don't want this," Erica tells him.
She watches him breathe deeply for a few seconds, listening to the rhythm of his heart.
"I know," Derek says.
"You don't want this, either."
He shakes his head when he says, "It doesn't matter what I want. The pack needs this."
"The pack needs us to be happy, not forced into something that you think will make them stronger," she snaps. "How is this going to help? You want it to be a magic fix-all, but it's not like that. We're not like that."
"This is how packs become bonded-"
"Oh, shut up," Erica cuts him off. She thinks she's earned that, too. "It doesn't work like that."
She's making him angry. She can feel it through the web before she sees it flash in his eyes, red and feral. "I think I know more than you do," he growls. "This is the life I was born to."
"And that's why you don't get it," she says.
He deflates. Somewhere, she struck a chord, and she should feel more pleased about that then she does. She just feels tired.
She raises her arms to either side, holds her hands out, palms skyward. "Look at your pack."
"What do you mean?" he asks.
"Derek, look at us. This isn't what you were born into. Our pack is already different from everything else you've known. You killed your uncle and then he came back to life and he's still here. One of your wolves used to be a giant lizard who murdered people. Scott's closer to being an Omega than being your Beta. You have humans who are just as much pack as me and Boyd are."
He doesn't say anything, and Erica lowers her arms. She knows the others are watching from the window - she can feel Peter's gaze on her, Boyd's quiet discontent, Isaac's uncertainty.
"The pack needs an Alpha female," Derek says, again, and it's so much quieter this time. Erica can't even summon the anger at him anymore. He was trying. He was trying to do what he'd been bred to do, and he was trying to emulate the only method he'd ever known. He was just so bad at it.
"I know," Erica replies. "But you are so stuck in trying to do things properly that you fail to see the option to do things right."
The question is written all over his face when he raises his eyes to look at her again.
"It should be Stiles," she says.
"No," Derek responds, immediate.
Erica shakes her head at him; through the web, she can feel the others in the pack, and their tenuous, humming approval. This is what the pack wants. She wants to be happy, and so do they.
"He's way better at this shit than I am," she admits with a shrug.
"He's human," Derek says, and it sounds so desperate.
"Derek," Erica sighs. "At some point, you have to let go of all this bullshit you believe the pack is supposed to be. You can't fit us into a mold, and I think that's why it's not working."
He says nothing, so she continues, "And you can't... you can't try to make someone your mate. That isn't how it works."
"But it needs to be a wolf," Derek says. It sounds like he's run ragged, like there's little left holding him together. "This is the pack."
"Dude," Erica says, and sighs. "You're such a guy sometimes."
He looks at her in question, face vulnerable and unhappy.
"You can't be logical about this," she tells him. "This isn't logic. It's just... feelings. It's human. I think it's the most human thing we've got."
He laughs. It's not a happy sound. She doesn't know how she's managed to make him sound so wrecked, but the Derek standing in front of her now seems so, so much smaller. Younger and less sure. With his shields stripped away, there's painfully little too him, and Erica's wolf is whining in response.
"This is why," he says, running his tongue over his bottom lip, "you would have made a good Alpha female."
"I know," she replies, and lets herself grin at him. "But it was never meant to be me. I think..." She shrugs again, swallowing back her own laughter, "I think it was always him anyway, to begin with."
"They're going to tear us apart," Derek says.
Erica smiles again, risking a glance at the window. Peter is gone, and Isaac has his nose pressed up against the glass. Boyd is standing next to him, with his palm splayed against the material - her heart skips a bit when he smiles at her. It's a real smile, too, the kind that spreads all the way across his face.
"No, they aren't," she says. "We won't let them."
--
"Do you think wolves mate for life?" Boyd asks, when it's dark and their limbs are tangled up in one another's. His fingers are moving against hers - small, gentle, rhythmic motions, like he's memorizing each tiny twitch of her muscles as she echoes them back.
Erica thinks of the article. "I don't know," she admits. "I don't think it's that much different from everyone else. Maybe finding a mate is just... finding someone who will be compatible."
"It's not very romantic," Boyd says, but it's teasing, and Erica bumps her shoulder against the smooth plane of his chest in response.
"Well, I'm not a very romantic person," Erica replies. She knows he can feel the lie.
--
The next pack meeting is kind of a mess, the beautiful, disorganized sort of chaos that makes Erica feel so at home. She figures after everything she's allowed to grab one of the better sofa seats to sit through it, and Scott brought pizza. Everyone tends to be a little more agreeable when there is sustenance involved.
Halfway through, the discussion about the defenses just sort of dissolves to the point where the pack watches Derek and Stiles argue about which method is going to net the best results in the next training session.
"-because that's actually the worst idea you've ever had."
"How do you know that? You haven't seen all my ideas. In fact, you weren't even present for them, and I'm pretty sure that the time I thought I could fly if I jumped off the deck wearing a sheet-cape was far worse than this one."
"You're babbling to avoid having a reasonable discussion about this."
"No, I'm babbling because you hate it, and because my mind works better when my mouth is spouting off nonsense."
"See, you just admitted that your plan was nonsense."
"You can't prove that's the part of this I was talking about, Derek. My plan is genius. If you'd just let me go over the details, I'm sure the others would agree with me-"
"Don't bring the others into this."
"This isn't a dictatorship, dude. They get a say in these things, too."
"I don't know where you are getting these strange notions from."
"I can't - did you seriously... oh my god, you have got to be kidding. You really are kidding. You just made a joke, didn't you. Derek, what the hell. Were you arguing with me this whole time just to - you were. You are smiling. Oh, come on, are you for real right now?"
Erica leans back into the couch, curling against Boyd's warmth. The pleased buzz through the pack bonds is soothing; her wolf is calm and content, smoothed by the fact that the tension in the web has dissolved. His free hand is on her knee, and the weight of it is wonderful.
"This is never going to get resolved," Boyd murmurs near her ear.
"I know," she agrees. "It's great. Can you grab me a Coke? My hands are covered in pizza grease."