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Isaac isn’t living in his house anymore.
Jackson realizes that in the principal’s office when the sheriff questions him about Isaac’s dead, abusive father, his eyes full of thinly veiled contempt. Jackson realizes this when he sees Scott and Stiles just on the other side of the window, Scott’s ear to the pane, listening in on the conversation, Scott’s stupid accidental werewolf hearing.
Isaac isn’t living in his house anymore, but Jackson watches through the blinds when Isaac ignores the yellow evidence tape barricading the front door and hops over the fence into the backyard. He watches as Isaac’s shadow moves through the darkened house, watches him walk into the bedroom that faces Jackson’s, Isaac’s bedroom, and watches him pack a tattered backpack full of clothes.
There’s a car parked out front, a car that Jackson knows for a fact belongs to Derek, and Jackson pulls the blinds up and opens the window, leaning out, his hands flat against the sill. Derek’s not in the car, but the movement catches Isaac’s eye across the street, and he looks at Jackson looking at him, Isaac’s hands full of clothes and books, the hands that Jackson imagines turning into claws during the full moon, the hands that Jackson should have.
Isaac walks closer to the window, his movements easy and fluid and inherently supernatural, and he smiles, and it’s not kind.
Jackson straightens up and squares his jaw, his hands curling into fists, and all of a sudden there’s an ache on his side where a bite should have turned into something that it wasn’t, and Jackson feels it burning hot, feels it sharp beneath his clothes. Isaac is still watching Jackson, still smiling, and Jackson closes the window with an unnecessary amount of force, making sure that Isaac can see his middle finger clearly through the glass.
***
Isaac comes back the night after that.
He stands in Jackson’s front yard long after the streetlights have dimmed down to nothing, long after Jackson’s parents have gone to bed, and he smiles up at Jackson’s window and Jackson watches him watch Jackson.
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even move.
Jackson turns off the lamp on his desk and pulls his chair over and opens the window, leaning out over the sill. “Don’t you have anything better to do?” Jackson says.
And Isaac just smiles.
***
He comes back the night after that, too, and Jackson has left the window open this time, so he can just lean out over the sill, the wood cold underneath his palms. “Does Derek know you’re stalking me?” His voice is rough and unafraid and his side aches and aches even though the skin is smooth and untouched.
Isaac shrugs. “Probably,” he says, and it might be the first time that Jackson has ever really heard him speak in all the years that he’s known him, and Isaac sounds confident and unapologetic and Jackson knows that it must be completely different from the boy that used to live across the street.
“Can’t you go play with your new friends?” Jackson says, and he almost sounds angry, but Isaac is still smirking below him, his hands in the pockets of his hoodie.
“I like annoying you,” Isaac says, and Jackson breathes out slowly through his nostrils.
“You’re fun,” Isaac says, and Jackson forgets to flip him off.
***
The next time Jackson sees him, Isaac is sitting at Jackson’s desk when Jackson comes home from lacrosse practice. Jackson doesn’t ask him how he got in his bedroom from the locked window twenty feet above the ground, mostly because he doesn’t really care, but also because he really doesn’t want to talk about why the bite chose Isaac instead of him. He slips the duffel bag off of his shoulder and drops it onto the floor and Isaac continues to ignore him, flipping through one of Jackson’s neglected textbooks, swiveling Jackson’s chair from side to side.
Jackson rolls his eyes and turns away to pull off his shirt and change into a new one, but when he turns backs, Isaac is standing ridiculously close, his nose almost touching Jackson’s neck. “What,” Jackson says, but Isaac holds a hand over Jackson’s mouth, lowering his face to the place where Jackson’s neck meets his shoulder. Jackson can feel Isaac’s hot breath tickling his skin and he wants to move back or push him away or something equally as normal, but there’s something inside of him feels heavy and frozen.
Isaac pulls back, his hand still on Jackson’s mouth, and says, “You were with Scott.”
Jackson mumbles words against Isaac’s hand, his voice muffled and almost angry. Isaac gives him a look and then pulls it away, and Jackson says, “I was at lacrosse practice. Scott was there. You weren’t there because you’re on the run from killing your father in a gigantic werewolf freak out and also probably because you were in here sniffing my underwear or something just as disgusting. Has that caught you up to speed?”
Isaac frowns and says, “I didn’t kill my dad.”
Jackson makes a face and says, “Whatever, I don’t care.” He turns around again just to have something to do with his hands, reaching inside of his drawer and rummaging through his tee shirts, trying to stop his body from trembling.
And Isaac says, “I do,” his voice soft and thick.
And when Jackson turns around again, Isaac is gone.
***
Jackson wakes up in the middle of the night to Isaac’s shadow against the far wall of his bedroom. “You’re worse than Derek,” Jackson says, and turns over in bed. Isaac huffs out something like a laugh and Jackson closes his eyes and sighs, long and loud.
“Are you going to watch me sleep all night?” Jackson says.
He can hear a noise like Isaac’s shoulders scratching against the wall in a shrug, and Isaac says, “Maybe.”
Jackson pulls the covers down to his waist and his chest is bare in the naked light from the window, and Jackson opens his eyes again and watches Isaac’s throat move and Jackson tilts his head and moves the covers down a little lower and Isaac lifts his hand like he wants to tell Jackson to stop, but Jackson doesn’t, couldn’t even if he tried, so he slips his hand underneath the elastic of his boxers.
He pulls slow and smooth and Isaac’s chest is moving faster and faster, and Jackson watches him watch Jackson, and Isaac bites his lip and Jackson breathes in short, stuttered breaths, and Jackson can see Isaac place his hands flat against the wall, and Jackson wants to tell Isaac to come a little closer, but he’s not sure he will even be able to speak if he tried, so he says nothing, and Isaac is watching him watch Isaac, and Jackson pulls harder now, pulls faster, and he makes a small, faltered sound just as he comes.
Isaac says, “Jackson,” and it’s the first time Jackson has ever heard his name leave Isaac’s lips.
***
Isaac doesn’t show up the next day.
Or the day after that.
***
After Erica turns up at school like she was caught in a Hot Topic explosion, after she goes missing, and then Boyd after that, Jackson realizes that Derek’s moved on. Jackson realizes that the bite was never meant to take, that Lydia infected him with something that he will never be cured of, and that Isaac has moved in with the pack that Jackson was supposed to join instead.
He goes to lacrosse practice and takes his anger out on Danny through swift tackles and painful passes, and when Danny gives him a weird look and punches him in the shoulder harder than he would if he were just joking, Jackson focuses his anger on Scott.
Scott was just as bad as Isaac, even if Isaac had a choice that was almost not a choice, even if Isaac chose to be what he is and Scott just ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time. Scott was just as bad as Isaac, even if Isaac chose Derek.
Jackson lobs a ball that almost hits Scott in the head, and behind him, he can hear the Coach yell.
***
Isaac shows up the night before the full moon. He’s sitting on Jackson’s bed with his boots on Jackson’s covers, and Jackson walks in the door and wants to immediately walk back out, but doesn’t, if only because his parents are downstairs. “Get out,” he says, and Isaac smiles and shakes his head.
Jackson closes the door and leans against it, and Isaac is wearing a shirt that Jackson has seen Derek wear before and his side starts to ache and he wants to move closer to Isaac, move close enough that Isaac can smell the classrooms full of teenagers on Jackson’s skin, Danny’s warm touch during calculus, Scott’s heated shoulder bump in the hall. Jackson wants Isaac to smell Lydia’s perfume from when Jackson cornered her in front of the girl’s bathroom for the second time, her wide, bright eyes, and his hard grip on her thin wrist, his harsh words, the straightening of her glossed lips.
Jackson wants Isaac to smell the desperation inside of him, the longing that sits somewhere around his heart, and Jackson wants Isaac to smell the ache that he feels sometimes, the ache that rips through him like Derek’s teeth, and Jackson wants Isaac to smell the arousal that’s building up and up and up.
Jackson pulls off his shirt in one fluid motion and Isaac bares his teeth, but he doesn’t say stop. He doesn’t say no. Jackson moves closer to the bed and he drops the shirt on the floor and his fingers move to his fly and Isaac draws in a breath and Jackson smirks, and Isaac moves faster than Jackson thought he could, his mouth pushing hard against Jackson’s mouth.
Jackson pushes back, and it’s not sweet, and it’s not soft, and Isaac slaps Jackson’s hands away from Jackson’s fly with a deep, guttural growl and puts his own hands on the zipper there instead, and Jackson feels himself grow hard, and Isaac is warm against him, pliant.
“Fuck,” Jackson mumbles against Isaac’s mouth, and Isaac smiles, and his teeth are growing sharp, and Jackson surges forward, and he can feel the taste of blood explode on his tongue.
And Isaac licks it clean.