Chapter Text
It was snowing in Brooklyn.
That wasn’t new. It snowed in Brooklyn all the time, in the winter months.
Scott McCall was bleeding from a cut on his nose.
That wasn’t new, either. Scott McCall bled in Brooklyn all the time, regardless of the month.
He supposed he should be grateful. This time, it was just a cut on the bridge of his nose. The blood was minimal, and it was running down the side, mostly out of the way. The biggest annoyance was the way he found himself reflexively licking his lips when the line of blood got to them, and the resultant burst of copper-iron taste in his mouth. That was fine, mostly. Blood in his mouth beat blood in his eyes, and blood in his eyes beat some of the alternatives that meant not bleeding at all. It was better than letting the bullies win.
Even from three stories up, the tension that New York seemed to grow out of was palpable. He could sense it in the air, see it in the way the people moved along the sidewalk, feel it thrumming up through the concrete and steel to vibrate under his hands. He could hear it in the footsteps below him, climbing up the fire escape ladder to join him on his landing. It was a city caught between the knowledge that it was at war and the knowledge that the war was still far away, made somewhat unreal by the distance. Some of them didn’t think about it at all, except for how the rationing and the war effort inconvenienced them, and Scott could see it in their faces. It drove him just a little bit mad, watching from the other side of that coin where he thought about it all the time. He wouldn’t have considered himself a violent man, and yet -
Fighting was never far from his mind.
One landing below him on the fire escape, someone jumped up and rapped their knuckles roughly against the sole of his shoe. Moving his foot to one side, Scott could look down through the grill of the metal to see the face of his closest friend peering up at him.
“I can’t believe you made me climb up here just to have a decent conversation.” Stiles was grinning, lopsidedly, shading his eyes with one hand against the sun glare on the snow. “...did you manage to get your nose broken again?”
Scott found himself grinning in return, lifting one of his own hands to prod at the cut, the bridge of his nose, his cheekbone all in turn. “I don’t think so. I let them off easy this time.”
“Uh-huh. Why don’t you take pity on me, too, and come on down? We can go to the deli on the corner and get out of the snow.” Stiles lifted his eyebrows like he could offer up the suggestion on them to reach Scott’s level.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming down, keep your pants on.”
They were both back on the solid ground of the sidewalk before Scott realized that Stiles was dressed in the neat-pressed lines of an Army dress uniform. It made him look even more awkward than Stiles usually was, somehow, emphasized his shoulders in a way that made him seem a bit top-heavy. He had his hat tucked under one arm, hair slicked back, and the whole vision made Scott’s heart sink down through his ribcage. “Got your orders, huh?”
Stiles’ smile dropped a little, the corners falling. His eyes dropped a second later, looking down somewhere in the vicinity of his toes. There was something very guarded in his gaze when he finally looked back up at Scott’s face, like he was searching for understanding. “Yeah. Sergeant Stilinski, at your service. I pack up to leave for the base in the morning.”
“In the morning?” Forget through his ribcage; Scott’s heart bottomed out and landed on the sidewalk with a thud only he could hear. He left it behind as he paced Stiles on their way to the deli.
He and Stiles had tried enlisting at the same time. When Stiles had first come to him expressing interest, Scott had thought maybe he was drunk - Stiles wasn’t the best with authority and he certainly didn’t do well with highly rigid schedules and rules he had to abide by. It wasn’t until Stiles had revealed that he’d had relatives in Poland still, ones that they’d lost contact with, that Scott understood Stiles’ need to take the fight to the Nazis. Family had always been important to Stiles, but it had become measurably moreso after his mother had died. Scott could easily believe that Stiles’ stubborn need to punish an entire army for their transgressions against the Stilinski bloodline was greater than Stiles’ inability to follow orders.
For Scott, it was less personal. He just wanted to make a difference. He could recognize evil when he saw it, and currently evil was sweeping across Europe, razing and burning everything in its path. Something deep inside of Scott, some elemental component of his being, couldn’t stand to sit around safe at home while that was happening, doubly so if his best friend was determined to run straight into the conflict.
The Army had been happy to take a young, headstrong and able-bodied man with a whip-snap mind. They’d been a little more reluctant to accept his small, weak, asthmatic best friend.
Which is to say they’d said no to Scott when they’d said yes to Stiles.
Scott had already known that. He’d gone back at least a dozen times since then, trying to prove that he could manage anything they asked of him, that he deserved to be at Stiles’ side going into the war as he’d already been for everything else. At least a dozen times, they’d rejected him, each time with less patience than the last. Now, Scott was going to be asked to stay behind while Stiles went across the ocean to put his life on the line.
The tailspin of this might be the last time I ever see Stiles was interrupted by a hand on his shoulder and a concerned, familiar voice. “Hey, buddy. You still with me?”
“Yeah, I’m still…” Scott shook himself back into the present, trying to offer up a smile to Stiles that he wasn’t really feeling. “I guess I just didn’t expect it to be so soon. I thought maybe we’d have more time to--”
Stiles cut him off with a wink, the same kind of overly-obvious, awkward ones he’d been giving for years. “Hey, hey, don’t worry about that. We’ve got plenty of time. Besides, I’ve got something I think you’re gonna want to hear that’ll make up for a lot. I just desperately need a pastrami on rye first.”
Scott was relatively certain nothing could make up for the fact that by this time tomorrow, Stiles would be far away and getting further, but he nodded his agreement, falling into step next to his friend.
The deli wasn’t far, and with the war rationing in effect, there was hardly ever a line. Stiles seemed to figure, fairly, that getting deployed was as good a reason as any to spend his meat rations, so he went to the counter to get them both sandwiches while Scott selected one of the many free tables and tried not to think too hard about the black clouds now looming on the horizon.
By the time Stiles came to sit down with their food, Scott had utterly lost all appetite. All he could think about was the Army, that they were taking his best friend away but they wouldn’t take him too. He thought about the front lines, all the fighting and the carnage and the death, and his stomach actually did a small flip, which was the opposite of helpful when it came to finding that sandwich appetising. “...so where are they sending you? Can you tell me that much?”
“Acshully,” Stiles’ words were slightly distorted by the massive amount of pastrami he was now tucking into one cheek. Manners weren’t exactly his forte. “I need to talk to you about that. Remember that thing I was telling you about that I thought you’d be interested in?”
“Stiles, that was half an hour ago at the most. I remember.”
Nodding, Stiles took a few moment to actually clear his mouth of food. When he was finished, he leaned in over the table, dangerously close to dragging the bright brass buttons on his jacket through his pastrami. When he spoke, it was with a low and conspiratorial tone, like he was sharing secrets with Scott that couldn’t share. Actually, he probably was. “So a few months ago, an Austrian scientist who goes by Fenris escaped Axis territory and brought with him some really incredible news as a gesture of goodwill. Apparently, the Nazis are very interested in the occult and what Fenris calls their Wolfsmensch program. Long story short, they’re trying to create some kind of super soldier, one that will be faster, stronger, more durable, and better at soldiering than the average Joe on the street.”
Scott frowned, his mouth pursing around an unfamiliar expression. “Okay. So what does that have to do with me? Or you, for that matter?”
“I got assigned to help recruit for the Army’s Project Lycan, which, like you might guess, is basically good ol’ Uncle Sam trying to get a jump on the Krauts and do the super soldier thing sooner and better, without some of the really, uh...troublesome parts of the program.” Stiles gestured with part of his sandwich, flapping cured meat through the air. “I thought you’d be a great candidate for it.”
Surprise made Scott sit straighter in his seat, although he struggled to keep his voice quiet. “Me? You thought the guy that the Army didn’t want at all would be a good candidate for their super soldier program?”
“Yep.” Stiles seemed almost proud of himself, the right corner of his mouth curling up in a lopsided smirk that had been Stiles’ mainstay for as long as Scott had known him. “Imagine how dramatic that would be. It would really prove the effectiveness of their program, wouldn’t it? If they made a super soldier out of a guy they weren’t even willing to enlist at all beforehand.”
Something fluttered inside of Scott’s ribcage that he couldn’t quite identify. He hoped it wasn’t going to turn into another asthma attack. “But what about you? You’re already recruited for this program, why don’t they want to turn you into a super soldier?”
Stiles’ response was mostly a laugh, muffled by more pastrami, a little messy and a little gross. None of those things were new to Stiles, either. “I lack the, uh, ‘appropriate attitude’. I’m already defiant enough, they aren’t going to give that kind of power to somebody who they’re afraid might go off and do his own thing. They’re looking for, what’s it called? Moral fiber. I’ve basically got none of it. But you’re actually made out of it. So you’d be perfect.”
He raised a finger to forestall any more doubts or questions from Scott, clearing his mouth a second time so that he could continue speaking once more in that low, intent-sounding tone. “Basically, my thinking is this: you go meet with these scientists and sign up for the super soldier program. It’s a little risky, but, hey, you were willing to risk your life for your country or whatever anyway, so there’s no change there. You ace the program and they deploy you into the field with a handler. That’s me. You use your moral fiber to keep me from going rogue and I use my pragmatism to keep your compassion from getting in the way too much because it’s war. We kick a lot of Nazis in the head and come home big heroes.”
It felt like Stiles had tried to cover all angles. Something warm moved through Scott at the thought, that even knowing that the Army had been utterly disinterested in Scott’s desire to serve, Stiles had gone out of his way to help and arrange for Scott to be able to circumvent the rules. He’d made a lot of effort to keep them together, and Scott couldn’t express how important that was to him. Who knows what Stiles had needed to do to get access to this, or who he’d sucked up to. The least Scott felt he could do was give it a chance, to reach out and take his one, single opportunity to go with Stiles and make a difference, and clutch to it tight with both hands.
Resolve solidified in his belly and brought his appetite back with it. Scott found himself smiling as he reached out to pick up his sandwich with both hands. “Okay. I’ll do it. After lunch, you can take me to meet these scientists and hope they have as much faith in me as you do.”
Stiles’ smile reflected back at Scott, proud and hopeful and altogether too boyish for a man in uniform. “That’s my boy.”