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Isaac Lahey was nine years, eleven weeks, three days, and thirty-six minutes old when he first discovered his gift. His mother, a baker of delicious pies, was bending over to place Isaac’s favorite pie - blueberry with graham cracker crust - in the oven, and then suddenly she was on the floor. She wasn’t breathing, eyes staring unseeingly up at the ceiling. Young Isaac knelt next to her, reached out, and touched her cheek.
“Goodness,” she said, blinking and looking over at Isaac, one hand lifting to where he had touched her. “I must’ve slipped. Can you close the oven, sweetie? The temperature’s dropping by the second.”
Isaac did as he was told, not thinking about how his mother had been still, and then not, his touch seemingly bringing her back to life.
While he was not thinking about this, he was staring out of the kitchen window at his best friend Scott McCall, who was playing in the yard with his father. Scott was Isaac’s favorite person, after Isaac’s mother, of course. He was kind, and funny, and he never laughed at Isaac like the other kids did. Isaac wanted to spend all of his time with Scott. He wanted to ask Scott over for pie when it was cool enough to eat.
The timer ticked down on the oven, and Isaac watched Scott’s father topple over, face turned up to the cloudless blue sky. Scott ran over, bent down, and touched his father’s face.
His father didn’t sit up.
Isaac sat with his mother in the living room while the ambulance pulled up to the McCall house, then pulled away with Scott’s father in the back. Isaac’s mother wore her washing gloves, and patted Isaac’s hand. The latex was bright yellow, still damp from dishwater, and felt warm against Isaac’s skin.
Later that night, Isaac climbed into bed, wishing he could run across his yard to Scott’s, give Scott a hug. If his mom had stayed on the floor that afternoon, instead of sitting up and finishing her pie, Isaac would have wanted Scott to come hug him. But Isaac’s mom said that wouldn’t be appropriate, that they should leave Scott and his mother in peace for the moment, and she leaned over to give Isaac a kiss goodnight.
The moments her lips touched his cheek, she went stiff as a board and fell to the floor of his room. Somehow, Isaac knew she wasn’t getting up again.
The last time Isaac saw Scott was at the cemetery. Scott’s father was being lowered into the ground a few rows over from where Isaac’s mother was as well. Isaac wanted to wave, or run across the bright green grass littered with headstones, wrap Scott in his arms. But he didn’t, thinking of his mother saying it wouldn’t be appropriate, and instead gave him a sad smile, which Scott returned.
*****
It is thirteen years, eleven weeks, three days, and thirty six minutes later when Isaac sees Scott again.
The facts are these: Isaac, having been moved away from his childhood home by his abusive father, has now come back to Beacon Hills to open a pie shop. The town is small, and the clientele smaller, and the pie shop does more for Isaac emotionally than it does financially.
Enter Vernon Boyd, a private investigator who discovers Isaac’s gift - and not the one that leads to delicious, warm fruit in a buttery crust - one day when he’s chasing a suspect down an alley. The suspect trips, impales himself on a broken piece of pipe, and then falls over into Isaac, who is stepping out into the alley with a bag of trash. The suspect rebounds, eyes going wide, and Isaac drops his trash, reaching out to catch the fleeing man, pressing a fingertip to his cheek and then breathing out in relief when the man crumples to the ground.
Isaac had learned his lesson all those years ago. He can bring back the dead, but only for one minute. Any longer and someone else has to die in their place. Balance of nature.
Boyd, as he prefers to be called, follows Isaac into the pie shop and questions him, and Isaac doesn’t know what to do other than tell the truth. Boyd proposes a partnership; it would be easier to solve a murder if one could speak directly to the victim, after all. And there are healthy monetary rewards for solving murders. Isaac agrees, seeing it as a way to bring some justice to an unfair world, and keep his pie shop open as well.
It works, and Isaac gets used to spending a good portion of his time in morgues. They’re no colder than the walk-in he uses to keep his butter and fruit, and he’s doing something good. Creating pies that bring people happiness during the day, and solving cases that bring people closure at night.
He’s been in town for three weeks, two days, and twelve minutes when he finally gets up the nerve to drive down his old street.
There are cars in front of the McCall’s house. Lots of cars. As if whoever lives there is having a party. Then he sees Scott’s mother, aged but still beautiful, standing on the front porch in a black dress, white tissue held up to her eyes, hugging another woman dressed in black.
Isaac’s heart goes cold.
He keeps driving, head ducked low in case someone spots him, and heads straight to the pie shop.
Boyd is at the counter, Erica hovering over him with a coffee pot. She smiles sweetly at Boyd, and Boyd smiles back, and Isaac drops onto a stool, shock making his eyes wide and his hands clammy.
“What’s the matter, boss?” Erica asks, wiping her hands on her apron and then reaching out to touch Isaac’s forehead. Isaac flinches away. He doesn’t like to be touched.
“Nothing, I just,” he starts, and then swallows. “Not feeling well, I suppose.”
“Feeling too bad to help me out with something?” Boyd asks, and makes a shooing motion at Erica. She rolls her eyes and leans an elbow on the counter, not budging. “Get me a slice of rhubarb?” Boyd asks, making his voice soft. Erica sighs, but gives in and goes.
“What is it?” Isaac asks, and Boyd slides a newspaper clipping out from under his coffee cup.
It’s about Scott.
Isaac reads it with a weight on his chest and a lump in his throat. Scott was killed in the preserve on the edge of town a couple of nights back. Signs point to animal attack - wolf. “But there are no wolves in Beacon Hills,” Isaac says, and Boyd nods, solemn.
“That’s where we come in. Sheriff’s department is offering a reward for anyone with information. I’m thinking human, not animal, and if we solve the case, the reward’s ours.”
“I know him,” Isaac says, and covers the small picture of Scott - older than Isaac remembers him, smiling at the camera - with his thumb. “The boy - guy. The guy. We, uh, we. We sort of grew up together.”
Boyd slants him a look. “That mean you can’t work this case?”
“No.” Isaac slides the clipping back across the counter, watches Erica carry a plate laden with a huge slice of rhubarb pie out from the kitchen. “No. I can do it.”
He does.
*****
The morgue seems especially cold this night. Isaac stands stiffly behind Boyd, who is sweet talking the person at the desk. The person at the desk is used to Boyd and Isaac, and waves his hand to let them pass.
Boyd taps a gleaming metal door, the tag on the front reading, “McCall, Scott.” Isaac touches the tag, then looks up at Boyd.
“Do you think I could do this one alone?”
“Why?” Boyd is suspicious, and Isaac doesn’t know how to make him less so.
“Because I want to? He’s - he was - a childhood friend, and I don’t want you looming over my shoulder when I talk to him before I re-kill him.”
Boyd tilts his head, considering, and then nods. He holds up a finger. “You have one minute.”
“I know.”
Isaac knows.
Boyd leaves him alone, and he takes a deep breath, lungs filling with cold, sterile air, before he slides the drawer out. He flexes his fingers before he curls them around the edge of the sheet, careful not to touch Scott’s skin too soon, and draws it down.
Scott’s chest is defined, the autopsy incisions neatly stitched back together. There are other wounds, gashes across his abdomen, that have also been stitched up. Isaac tries to ignore them and focuses instead on Scott’s face.
He’s handsome, in the way Isaac always pictured him growing up to be. He looks like, if he were alive, he’d always be smiling. His hair is thick and brown, healthy even in death. His jaw is crooked, but strong, and Isaac wishes he could fit his palm to the uneven curve of it without the implications of the touch itself.
Isaac hadn’t known what his feelings for Scott were when they were younger, but they’re unmistakable now. It hurts, looking down at Scott’s face, at his chest which doesn’t rise and fall with breath.
He glances up at the clock on the wall, waits until the second hand ticks onto the twelve, and then reaches out to touch Scott’s cheek.
Scott jumps, sucking in a breath, the way they all do when they reanimate. Reanimate is the word Isaac chooses for it, because it’s so literally true.
“What the - Isaac?”
Isaac feels his cheeks flush warm in the cool air of the morgue, because Scott recognizes him. He supposes he must look like himself, the way Scott looks like himself only older, but it still touches Isaac right in the center of his chest, that Scott would remember enough of him to recognize his older self.
“What are you doing here? I was - holy - I’m dead, aren’t I?”
“Well not dead so much right this moment, but you were up until I touched you, yes. And we don’t have much time. You have to tell me - “
“What do you mean by that? This is all really confusing.” Scott’s mouth pulls down in a frown, and Isaac wants to trace the shape of it with his fingers. Sadly, he can’t, because Scott being dead again is the last thing Isaac wants, but that’s exactly what he’ll be if Isaac puts his fingers on Scott’s mouth.
“I know, and I’m sorry. I wish I had time to explain. But you were attacked, and people are saying it was a wolf.”
“There aren’t any wolves in Beacon Hills,” Scott says, and Isaac nods.
“Which is why we’re wondering what really happened.”
Scott frowns harder, lines appearing between his furrowed brows. Isaac wants to smooth them away, but again, he can’t. “It looked like a wolf. Almost? It was big and black and furry. But it had red eyes - glowing red. And it walked on all fours but not like a wolf does. Almost like a man would if they were pretending to be a wolf. You grew up nice.”
The non sequitur throws Isaac slightly, and he presses his damp palms to his thighs. “Nice as in kind or nice as in -”
“Nice looking. You look nice.”
Scott’s frown is softening, flattening out, and then it curves up into a smile. Isaac smiles back, but then he glances up at the clock. The second hand is just passing the six, ticking closer to the nine, and Isaac has to hurry if he wants all the information.
Or.
“What would you say if I told you you don’t have to be dead?”
“I would say that sounds good. I don’t want to be dead.”
Scott keeps smiling, and Isaac shouldn’t do this, he really shouldn’t. It could be Boyd, or Erica, or the nice person at the front desk, or the friendly mailman that delivers to the pie shop, or anyone. Isaac doesn’t like being responsible for deaths, but Scott’s mouth keeps curving upwards, and the second hand of the clock goes right past the twelve.
Isaac whooshes out a breath, and Scott glances up at the clock, back at Isaac’s face.
“Do I get to stay alive?”
Isaac nods, and Scott swings his legs over the edge of the drawer, tucks the sheet around his waist, and folds his hands in his lap.
“How does this work?” he asks, and Isaac shrugs.
“I honestly have no idea.”
*****
It’s easier than it should be, in the end. Isaac finds a drawer with “Doe, John” on the tag and switches the information. The new Scott McCall is sent to be cremated, and the real Scott McCall sneaks out of the morgue wearing his sheet like a toga, covering up as many of his stitches as he can. Isaac leaves with Boyd, answering Boyd’s questions to the best of his ability, and then comes back later for Scott. He’s shivering in his sheet, and leans closer to Isaac for warmth.
“We can’t,” Isaac says, and leans away. “We can’t touch. Not if you want to stay alive.”
Scott frowns again, looking out the window at the waning moon. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“Neither do I,” Isaac says, and drives away from the hospital.
The facts are these: Scott, having moved away from Beacon Hills for school, was visiting his childhood home, and went for a run in the preserve. There he was attacked by something wolf-like that wasn’t actually a wolf, and killed. He is happy to be alive again, though it means not being able to see his mother ever again, nor his friends back at school.
“Stiles,” Scott says, and pulls up Facebook on his phone. Post after post of condolences load under Scott’s smiling profile picture, arms around two guys. One is fair, smile bright, and the other is darker, more dour. “That’s Derek,” Scott says, tapping Derek’s handsome, serious face. “He and Stiles are like one bickering match away from finally dating. Stiles is my bro, has been since … “ he trails off, lowering the phone and tilting his head at Isaac. “Since you moved away, actually.”
“Oh?” Isaac asks, and shifts on the couch, making sure there’s still space between them.
“He moved into your house. We became best friends. His dad still lives there. He’s the sheriff.”
“He’s probably working on your case, then.”
“Probably,” Scott says, and presses his thumb against his phone screen, holds it up. “Stiles is a goof, but I love him.”
Stiles looks goofy, and Scott looks like he loves him. Isaac wonders if he looks at Scott the way Scott is looking at the picture of Stiles, or if his love looks a little different, means something more.
Scott looks up at him, and Isaac tries not to look anything but interested. And sorry. Which he is.
“I’m sorry,” he says, in case his face isn’t saying it enough. “That you won’t get to see them again.”
Scott shrugs, and grins. “It’s worth it, I guess, to be living again.”
*****
Isaac brings Scott to the pie shop when no one else is there, shows him how to roll out dough and slice fruit to be just the right thickness for filling.
“Too thick and it throws the whole feel of the pie off. Too thin and it gets overcooked.” Isaac presses through an apple with his knife, a slice the perfect thickness falling off to the side. Scott plucks it up with two fingers, pops it into his mouth.
“You’re right,” he says, through a smile and a mouthful of apple slice. “It’s perfect.”
The cooler is full of ripe fruit, but there’s another delivery of fruit that only Isaac sees, plastic baskets overflowing with fruit that is bruised and rotting. Scott watches as Isaac skims his fingers over molding peaches, their dents filling out and their skin getting bright again.
“If you touch them to make them alive again, who puts them into the pies?”
“Erica,” Isaac says,and slides the basket of newly ripened peaches onto Erica’s shelf in the cooler. “She’s the only one that can make pies with the fruit I’ve brought back.”
Scott watches Isaac take a basket of regular peaches down, and then helps him cut them into perfectly sized slices.
They go on like this for two days, eight hours, and six minutes, until Scott starts to carry a Dutch apple pie through the swinging doors into the shop and then yelps, nearly dropping the pie and ducking back into the kitchen.
“What?” Isaac asks, watching Scott scramble away from the door.
“Erica,” Scott says, and then the doors swing open again, Erica storming through with her hands on her hips. She looks from Isaac, standing frozen at the counter with flour all over his hands, to Scott, backed to the wall with his hands held up in front of him. The crushed pie lays in the doorway, oozing fruit.
“Erica,” Isaac says, and tries to sound like he doesn’t have a childhood friend who should be dead in his kitchen.
“He’s supposed to be dead,” Erica responds, pointing an accusing finger at Scott.
“I don’t know what you mean. Oh, you mean that McCall guy? The wolf attack? This isn’t him, he just looks like him.” Isaac raises hopeful eyebrows at Scott, who sighs and gets to his feet.
“We went to high school together,” Scott says, brushing off his knees.
“Oh.”
“Right, oh,” Erica says, and steps closer to Isaac. “What the hell is going on?”
Isaac flashes back to the first night Boyd had found out about his gift, how the truth came so easily, and chooses it once more. Erica doesn’t believe it, until Boyd comes in and corroborates Isaac’s story, and then she hugs Scott, arms pressing into his back and making Isaac’s chest ache.
“It’s nice to be hugged,” Scott says, and doesn’t meet Isaac’s eyes over Erica’s shoulder.
*****
That same day Stiles comes in to the shop. Isaac watches him come through the front door, the bell jangling over his head, followed by his brooding possibly-boyfriend. Isaac splashes coffee into the cup of a customer at the counter, and then ducks into the kitchen, where Scott is rolling out dough. He has flour on his cheek and Isaac is terrified.
“What’s wrong?” Scott asks, when he looks over and sees Isaac’s face.
“Stiles,” Isaac says. He’s still holding the coffee pot. “He’s out in the shop.”
“Oh,” Scott says, his knuckles going white around the handles of the rolling pin. “He must have stayed in town after my - “
“Your funeral,” Isaac finishes for him, and Scott nods.
“Talk to him? See if he’s okay?”
“He’s not going to be,” Isaac says, but he goes.
Stiles is sitting at the counter, Derek at his elbow, looking as dour as ever. Erica is patting Stiles’s shoulder with one hand, refilling his tea with the other. Derek is frowning down at a slice of chocolate custard pie, and Isaac wants to pull it out from under him. No one should frown at pie.
“Is something wrong?” Isaac asks, when Erica looks up and her eyes are wet. He knows the answer but he doesn’t know what else to say.
“This is Stiles,” Erica says, pointedly. “He was friends with Scott McCall.”
“Oh,” Isaac says, and wrings his hands in his apron. “Your pie is on the house.”
“Thank you,” Stiles says, and holds up his fork. “It’s great pie.”
“You’re welcome.” Isaac hears a muted cough from the kitchen, and steps closer to the counter. “Your dad is working on the case, right?”
“Right. Though it’s pretty open and shut. Wolf attack.” Stiles cuts his eyes at Derek, who frowns harder at his pie. Isaac doesn’t know what that’s all about, but he does know something.
“There are no wolves in Beacon Hills,” he says, and Stiles looks up, tilts his head.
“That’s what we’ve all been saying.”
Isaac chews his lip while Derek chews his pie and Stiles looks up at Isaac, like he’s trying to figure something out. “You live in my old house,” Isaac says, apropos of nothing. “Scott and I, we were friends. When we were younger, we were best friends.”
“Well he was my best friend after that,” Stiles says, and now his eyes are wet. Isaac starts backing away towards the kitchen.
“If there’s anything I can do to help,” he says, and then turns tail and pushes through into the kitchen. Scott is sitting up on the counter, forlornly eating a peach.
“I wish I could talk to him,” Scott says, and Isaac wants to reach out for him so badly his fingers flutter at his sides.
“I wish I could hug you,” is Isaac’s reply, because he’s selfish, and he doesn’t know what else to say.
Scott jumps down off the counter, and Isaac thinks about fleeing. But Scott sets down his peach and wraps his arms around himself, a small smile on his face. He closes his eyes, and says, “I’m imagining you’re hugging me.”
It’s silly, he looks silly, standing there smiling with his arms around himself. But Isaac does the same, closes his eyes and crosses his arms, squeezes his own shoulder and pretends it’s Scott’s hand doing so, and even if it’s silly it still feels nice.
*****
Stiles comes back to the shop the next day. Scott isn’t there, choosing instead to spend the day on Isaac’s couch watching daytime television. It’s a luxury he hasn’t had in a long time, and Isaac can’t begrudge him it.
Erica isn’t in yet, so Isaac greets Stiles as he slides onto a stool at the counter, and asks what he’d like to drink.
“Tea, please,” Stiles says, and then wraps his long fingers around the mug when Isaac brings it out to him.
“How long are you staying?” Isaac asks, because it’s been four days, sixteen hours, eight minutes and twelve seconds since Scott’s funeral and Stiles is still here.
“Until we figure out what happened,” Stiles says. Isaac understands, because he wants to solve the case as well. It’s not about the reward anymore, it’s about Scott. It’s the same for Stiles, Isaac is sure, the closure necessary for him to leave, go back to his off-campus apartment and school. Back to his life.
It’ll be easier for Isaac and Scott if Stiles and Derek aren’t around, and that’s just another reason to get the case solved.
“You don’t think it was a wolf,” Isaac says, not a question, remembering Stiles’s considering look from the day before. Stiles makes the same face again, head tilted for a minute before he shakes it.
“Not so much. Like you said, there are no wolves in Beacon Hills.”
“Another large animal then?”
Stiles presses his lips into a thin line and shrugs. Isaac lets the silence stretch out. Stiles has ideas, and Isaac wants to draw them out. But Stiles is stubborn, or he doesn’t trust Isaac, or both, and he pushes his lips out with a rough exhale, then says, “Any strawberry today?”
Isaac goes to cut him a slice of strawberry pie.
*****
They go to the preserve that night, and Scott recreates the scene for Isaac.
“I was running, through here,” he makes a gesture with his hands to indicate the path he’d taken through the trees. “The wolf - thing - was there,” he points, and Isaac shivers inside his coat. “He came at me, and then I woke up with you.”
Scott smiles, as if coming back from the dead to see Isaac made up for being bitten by a giant wolf-thing. Isaac clears his throat, gestures at the tree line. “Maybe we should go see if there are tracks or - “
“Scott?”
Isaac and Scott both whirl around, and there stand Derek and Stiles.
Excuses and lies blow through Isaac’s mind like the leaves that whirl around them in the evening breeze. But Stiles is already running towards them, tackling Scott in a hug that leaves Isaac breathless - partially in sympathy, because Stiles looks like he’s squeezing the air from Scott’s lungs, and partially because he’s so jealous that he can’t do the same.
“What the, how,” Stiles stammers, holding Scott at arm’s length. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either, really,” Scott says, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Isaac brought me back.”
“Brought him back?” Derek asks, and Isaac shoves his hands deeper into his pockets, hunching up his shoulders.
“Tell them,” Scott says. “We can trust them.”
“It’s a thing I can do,” he says, and avoids two incredulous stares to meet Scott’s warmer, happier gaze. “If I touch something, or someone, um, dead, it, or they, uh, come back to life.” He shrugs, uncomfortable, and makes two more tallies on the “people who know” card in his mind.
They seem to accept the explanation fairly easily. Almost too easily. Isaac wishes he could go back to the shop and take out some of his tension on a ball of dough, but they have business to take care of.
“What are you doing out here?” Scott asks Stiles, who can’t seem to stop touching Scott. Isaac can understand, he’d be doing the same thing if he could. Stiles tightens his grip on Scott’s shoulder, the fabric of his coat bunching under Stiles’s curling fingers.
“Looking for clues, same as you, I imagine,” Stiles says, and looks back at Derek. They have a complicated conversation with only their eyebrows, ending in Derek giving a spectacular huff of irritation, and Stiles turns back to Scott. “We have some things to tell you.”
*****
The facts are these: Derek and Stiles accepted Isaac’s explanation so easily because they had a few unbelievable secrets of their own. Mainly, Derek is a werewolf. His family, the Hales, had lived in Beacon Hills when Isaac and Scott were younger, and they were werewolves too. They had a house on the preserve, and Derek’s uncle Peter lived with them. There’d been a fire, and most of the Hales had died in it. Derek had survived. So, apparently, had Peter.
“We think he set the fire to kill my mother,” Derek says, breath making misty white shapes in front of him as the night falls cold and crisp around them. “Which would make him the alpha. Alphas can take on a full wolf form.”
“Which would explain what you saw on the night you were killed,” Isaac says, and Stiles flinches.
“You get used to it,” Scott says, and pats his arm.
“We think he bit you and it didn’t take,” Stiles says, and Derek nods.
“If the bite doesn’t turn you, it kills you.”
Isaac thinks about this as he takes a bite of his own, into Erica’s new recipe for an apple pie with gruyere baked into the crust.
“It was Scott’s idea,” she says, when Isaac hums his approval. “He’s got a lot of good ideas.”
Scott is sitting in his favorite spot on the counter in the kitchen, kicking his feet back and forth and grinning.
“I have another idea,” he says, when Erica’s gone back out into the shop to place her new pie in the display case. “And it’s even better than baking cheese into a pie crust.”
He’s wrong.
Scott lays out a plan for catching Peter, and it’s the most terrible thing Isaac has ever heard.
“You are not using yourself as bait,” Isaac says, slamming a ball of dough down onto the counter and punching it. Scott hovers at his side, near enough to touch. Not being able to reach out and do so makes Isaac as upset as Scott’s idea does.
“It’s the perfect plan,” Scott says, but it’s really, really not.
Stiles doesn’t think so either, when Scott tells him about it. Derek just frowns and crosses his arms over his chest, but Isaac’s spent enough time with him in the past few days to recognize just how bad he thinks the idea is.
“I can be bait,” Stiles says, and Derek frowns harder.
“I’ll do it,” Isaac says, and Scott tries to protest, but Isaac cuts him off. “Derek has already said that I smell like you all the time. It makes sense for me to do it.”
*****
Isaac is twenty-two years, twenty-five weeks, five days, eight hours and thirty-six seconds old when he comes very close to dying.
Peter, in his terrifying wolfed-out form, advances on Isaac, doing the weird loping run that Scott had described, saliva dripping from his bared fangs. His eyes glow red in the dark forest, and then his entire self glows red as the Molotov cocktail Stiles cooked up explodes against his back.
Isaac lays on the ground, shivering in his wool coat and thick scarf, and watches Scott’s murderer go up in flames.
Then he blacks out.
When he comes to, Scott is hovering over him, hands fluttering over Isaac’s chest.
“I couldn’t tell,” he says, and leans forward a little further. His breath is coming fast, puffing out of him in white clouds, and Isaac scrambles back and away, hands skidding in the cold, damp leaves.
“I couldn’t touch you to feel if your heart was still beating.” Scott stays kneeling on the ground, and Isaac stares at him, heart very definitely beating in his chest, aching against his ribs.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and then Stiles and Derek skid to a stop behind Scott, huffing and puffing.
“It worked,” Stiles crows, fist pumping in the air, not noticing the tension thrumming between Isaac and Scott. Derek notices, and reaches down to grasp Scott’s arm, pulling him to his feet.
Isaac stays on the ground even though his butt is getting damp and cold from the leaves. He’s not sure his legs will support him.
Back home, Scott lingers in the kitchen doorway while Isaac makes tea, needing something to heat up his insides and calm his nerves. He’s still jumpy, knees shaky, and he needs to be doing something with his hands that isn’t grabbing Scott and ruining everything.
“I want to try something,” Scott says, and opens the drawer that Isaac keeps his parchment paper and Ziplock bags in. He takes out a storage bag, quart sized, and slides his hand into it. Isaac is confused for a split second, until he sees Scott reach for him, and then he panics.
“Don’t,” he says, but it’s too late. Scott is cupping his cheek.
The plastic is weird and crinkles against Isaac’s skin, but he can feel the warmth of Scott’s palm through it, and better yet, Scott is still alive. Alive and grinning at him, and pressing plastic-covered fingers to Isaac’s cheekbones. It is both the best and worst moment of Isaac’s life.
“I want to kiss you,” Isaac says, because the feel of Scott’s hand against him, even if it isn’t skin-to-skin, is short circuiting his brain. Scott smiles harder, and Isaac wants to cry.
“Let me,” Scott says, and holds up another plastic bag. He leans in halfway, lower part of his face distorted through the bag, and Isaac only hesitates a moment before closing the distance.
He tastes plastic, but feels the shape of Scott’s mouth underneath it, and that’s enough for him.
*****
Stiles and Derek are getting ready to leave, to go back to school and their normal lives. Stiles gets clingy, worried that something’s going to happen to Scott while he’s gone.
“Come with us,” Stiles says, and Isaac’s heart freezes up in his chest. “Doesn’t it hurt to be in the same place as your mom and not be able to see her?”
Scott smiles, a sad, small smile, and says, “It would hurt more to be somewhere Isaac isn’t.”
Stiles sighs, and Isaac aches, leaving them alone to go bake away his feelings.
Scott leaves with Stiles, to go say goodbye to Derek, and Isaac closes up the shop on his own, locking up and switching off all the lights.
Isaac falls asleep before Scott comes home, and when he wakes up Scott isn’t there. Isaac’s heart thuds in his chest, and he scrambles for his phone. He has no messages. He’s about to call Stiles in a panic when the front door bangs open and Scott barrels through. Isaac barely has a chance to open his mouth before Scott flings himself onto Isaac’s lap and presses their bare mouths together.
Isaac is too shocked to shove him away, and too shocked to kiss back, until he realizes that it’s been multiple seconds of skin on skin contact and Scott is still very much alive, wriggling atop Isaac’s thighs and moving his mouth over Isaac’s face like he can’t decided which part of it he wants to kiss the most.
“How?” Isaac asks, muffled against Scott’s jaw, and oh god, his jaw. His jaw is right there under Isaac’s lips and he can taste the salt of his skin. He can touch his skin.
The facts are these: Scott had gone behind both Isaac and Stiles’s backs and asked Derek to give him the bite. An argument had ensued, wherein Derek refused because he wouldn’t be responsible for Scott’s death. For Scott’s second death. Scott insisted that it would be worth the risk, and that he was sure it would work this time. Meaning he’d be immortal, and thereby immune to the dangers of being touched by Isaac. Derek dragged him to the local vet, and apparent supernatural consultant, who told them it wasn’t impossible.
In the end, Scott won, and Derek gave him the bite. And now he’s a werewolf.
“So we can touch. You can touch me,” Scott says, and latches back onto Isaac’s neck. Isaac thinks he might pass out from the way Scott feels against him, the fact that he can place his hands on Scott’s back, slide one up into Scott’s hair, and hold him there.
“I can touch you,” Isaac says, and then does just that.
Skin on skin contact is great when it’s hands and mouths, but it’s even better when it’s chests and hips and everything else, and Isaac spends an entire day touching Scott everywhere he can. He tastes every inch of him, and then they press together in bed and smile at each other, naked and sweaty and tangled together, until they fall asleep.
*****
Isaac is twenty-two years, twenty-six weeks, one day, three hours and fifteen seconds old when he says “I love you” for the first time. Scott is twenty-two years, twelve weeks, forty-seven days, five hours and seven seconds old when he says it back.