tampered | (no subject)

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(no subject)

When; Monday the 5th
Rating; G
Characters; Melissa and Scott McCall, aka Actual Puppy and Actual Pack Mom.
Summary; They've gotten a new apartment, but now it's time to get new furniture! Discussions happen about box springs and animal clinics and werewolf packs.
Log;

She has a notebook open in front of her, with dimensions of their new apartment jotted down in front of her. She's still honestly a bit stunned with everything, but not least of which is how were they going to pay for this? The money looked like Monopoly money to her, frankly, and it didn't seem like they'd have enough for everything they needed.

So she's gonna be frugal. New beds, a sofa, a kitchen table and chairs. They can decorate more as they settle in. The only thing she's really going to splurge on is cookware. She wants a really nice set of pots and pans.

She pauses in front of a muted blue sofa, and cocks her head at it.

"What do you think? Too blue? Not blue enough?" she asks Scott. He was old enough to have an opinion on these things now.

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"Oh. Oh!"

That she didn't know, and she's a little surprised to find out just how reliant Deaton is on Scott. And vice-versa. Memo to self, have a chat with Alan. As...soon as they can get back home.

"So, you think she knows what's going on? With everything back home?"

He squares his jaw and finally makes eye contact again.

"She has to, right? She pointed us in the direction of Lydia." To find him, he means. But, that really just led to Danny and his report on currents. "She knows more then she's letting on."

It's only frustrating because he's not there to confront her or ask her questions. If she's Deaton's sister then she must be on their side, right? Only Scott can start out feeling guilty about Stiles and end up in Albuquerque with Ms. Morrell and her secrets.

"What she said to Stiles. How she said it. It sounded..."

"...Almost like she was trying to warn him."

She's following his train of thought now. So much of his new life has left her in the dark, but damn it, she's going to keep up with him if it kills her. There is nothing, nothing she won't do for him.

"But...again. This is all happening there. And we're here. Time is frozen back there, right? So it'll have to wait, Scott."

"Yeah," he finally says, realizing this revelation is two weeks and four days too late. Unless she somehow joins them all and can answer questions, he's hit a deadend there. He should make a list of all his hunches, though. He'll do that when he gets back. He's decided!

Except, he probably won't remember making this connection.

He shakes the thought out of his head, realizing it's too little too late.

"I like the couch. The green one." And he does.

"Then we'll get it."

She stands up off said couch, and pulls out her measuring tape. This is how she is, practical and down to earth. Right now, they're here, and stuck. So she'll make it as comfortable as possible for both of them. All of them, if she has her way.

"I know everything feels like it's the end of the world. I was a teenager once, too. Amazing as that might be to think about. I'm just saying that you shouldn't feel guilty about things out of your control."

Scott takes the other end of the measuring tape, holding it in place. He leans his head forward, slightly, before keeping his voice lowered.

"I know I can't control how Stiles' feels." He can just sense it. "But, I didn't know. How bad everything got for him. How scared he was." He should've. Besides his super nose, he'd been so preoccupied with Gerard threatening his mother and trying to save someone. He missed his best friend's cries for help.

Which, fell on Ms. Morrell's ears.

"Well, you can be there for him now," she points out, scribbling down the dimensions of the sofa in her notebook.

"Scott. People make mistakes. Every day. There is absolutely nothing wrong with making mistakes, and it doesn't mean you're a moral failure for it. Did Stiles reach out to you first and you ignored him? If that's the case, then yeah, you should apologize. But if he bottled it all up and didn't tell you, you can't blame yourself. Just like, oh I don't know, you bottling things up, and not telling me?"

She glances up at him with eyebrows raised, pointing out just how ridiculous his guilt can be.

Okay, that is ... fair - but not fair at the same time. Stiles did not let him know. That's true. But, he can sense these things, literally smell them. And then he got kidnapped! And beaten up. He takes a few steps, closing the tape measure.

"I thought I was keeping you safe." And, how wrong had he been with that? And there back to Sheriff Stilinski. Or, Scott is, in his head. They do need to tell him. They have no choice, do they? But, they can't because they're here. Well, then.

Scott also knows what his mother means. She doesn't mean before. She means now. She means back home. She means even before the bite ever happened. It's what he does. Scott doesn't need help because he does the helping. He takes care of others. He saves others.

Or, he tries really hard.

"We should look at beds."

Moms are the queens of fair not fair. It's part of their mom arsenal, given to them the second the water breaks and the labor begins. Sixteen hours in the hospital with you, young man, brought you into this world, et cetera.

She smiles softly, and reels the measuring tape back in with a snap.

"I know," she says, "and I appreciate it. Now maybe you can start to recognize that I need to do the same for you? Keeping you safe is my number one priority. And it always has been."

Standing back up, she makes one last note as to the model name and number of the sofa, and nods toward the beds.

"Lead the way."

"I know," he replies, feeling way more like a kid then he has in months. But, she'll have to realize there are some things she can't save him from. That she can't even be near. He'll tell her things. He will. Not all things. Not the motel. But, he'll tell her things. She just has to realize sometimes, he won't be able to right away. He's a werewolf now.

It changed everything.

Tacking on another smile, he does, heading straight past a pink one with a canopy. A giant no there, mom. But, he sees a few more modern ones.

It wasn't her intention to make him feel like a child, but to remind him that she's there for him, supporting him. Although...yes, not telling her about the motel is a very good choice, because she'd probably never stop crying. There's very little in this world that would make her freak out. Her baby boy killing himself would be one of those things.

She deliberately ignores the pink bed, because oh god no. That's not her style either, thank you. But she does see a nice wood-frame bed that catches her eye.

"Ooh, this looks comfy. I wonder if they have a pillow-top option?"

He doesn't feel patronized (he thinks he's using that word right) - he just feels young. Sometimes, he forgets how young he is. Crazy, right? He's seventeen. Not a virgin anymore. A werewolf. His life is insane enough without being dropped into an alternate universe. He's not going to kill himself. He is not going to kill himself. And Stiles saved the day, there. But, that happened weeks ago.

Somehow.

"What's the pillow-top option?" He barely remembers furniture and bed terms from the first time they went through this. But, he remembers liking a more modern look. That's what his mom had called it when he'd pointed out all the ones he'd liked.

"That's where they have an extra fluffy part on top of the mattress, makes it more squishy."

She's pushing down on the mattress now with both hands, testing the firmness of it. And she looks back up at him.

"So...one for me, one for you. This is gonna be expensive, Scottie. Are you sure we have enough money for this?"

It's the first time in two decades that her finances haven't been in her direct control and it's very worrying.

"Oh, I like that," he thinks, remembering back. While she pushes, Scott just jumps, dropping his behind down, bouncing a few times. He considers it his lips meeting each other.

"I haven't used a lot of my allowance for the last two weeks. And your starter money can get us the apartment." It'll work. "You'll get a job at the hospital. I'll get a part time job until the clinic is ready. We can do this." He looks up at her. He means it. "And we can make Stiles get a job and pay rent." He's mostly joking. He would never make Stiles do anything - except for not get drunk and pity himself in the Xanadu gardens, but that's hours from now.

"Are you going to invite Derek?"

She's still fretting about the money, and probably will until she can establish a comfortable margin of fallback money. Ever since Scott's dad cleaned out their account when he skipped out on them, she's been mildly obsessed with having savings.

But then she nods, setting her lips just like Scott is. Like mother, like son.

"I am. Whether or not he takes me up on it, I don't know. But I don't want him to think I don't want him around. He is part of your...pack or whatever, right?"

Her voice is very low when she says that, barely audible, so they can't be overheard.

Those lips part, attempting to answer her. He doesn't know. Technically, he'd be a part of Derek's pack but he resisted all last year.

"We're on the same side," he finally comes up with. "But, I'm not in a pack." He's oblivious to what some things might mean, how Isaac has been acting - how even though Isaac and Derek are pack, Derek still sent Isaac packing. Though, the details about that are fuzzy. "He tried. Last year. I couldn't." He still didn't like what Derek did to Isaac, Erica, and Boyd. Even though they had a choice. They had no idea what they were getting themselves into.

"We can trust him."

She nods at that again, and then also sits down on the bed. A beat. And then she falls backwards, to lie down, her legs dangling off the edge. She was right, this is comfy.

"Then we're on the same side," is the simple answer. "And he's on his own as well, from what you've told me. So, he can come stay with us temporarily, or for good, it's up to him. But there will be an invitation extended. After he and I hash some things out."

He follows suit, draping an arm back. He turns his head.

"Hash what things out?" That may be the most foreboding thing he's heart all day. Perhaps this week. He doesn't love the sound of it but he knows his mother still has to be a mother. She's a parent. And not an overworked, exhausted parents right now. Not on her way out or her way to bed. Maybe things would be easier if she got to those 'I think I've parented enough for the night' moments were more frequent, like when she asked him and Stiles about the mandatory curfews.

But, things have changed. And now that they're all here in a relatively smaller space and Derek can actually be found? He knows things are going to have to be said.

"You remember it was Peter who bit me. Not Derek."

"I know."

She rolls her head just enough to take him in out of the corner of her eye, and she gives him a wry little smile.

"Peter is one of the things I want to talk to him about, frankly. But the main thing I want to talk about is thanking him for watching over you and Stiles before I got here."

"Oh," he replies, rolling his head back to stare at the ceiling fan. His head falls to the other side before sitting up. "I like that one." It's a black, modern frame. Sleek. Simple. He's up and moving towards it. He checks the tag. "It's on sale." How they ever schedule sales here, he doesn't know. And he jumps, diving onto it, feet up, he's not a barbarian before rolling over onto his back.

"I think I like this one for me."

She chuckles a little bit to herself, and sits back up to watch him.

"If you like it, get it."

His abrupt change of subject is endearing, and a trick he so obviously learned from Stiles. She can only go along with him, and trust in him. Because she does trust him, he's shown he's more than capable of making good choices. Most of the time, anyway.

And he sits up again, arms flopping to the sides of his legs.

"Do you like that one?" he asks, up again and taking a step towards the other bed.

"...You know? I think I do."

She pats the mattress one last time, and then stands up.

"So, we'll need sheets and blankets, too. I wonder if this store offers credit? Not that I can prove my FICO score to anybody here, but hey."

"We can find out." Everything is easily obtainable here. He has friends. They won't go without the essentials. And, if Derek agrees to go with them, they already have food for another week.

"So, tables, now?" he asks, before, looking around them. "That one looks like the bed Stiles has back home." Maybe giving him actual incentive to stay will help Stiles decide to move with them. Because, he cannot live in the forest alone with Derek Hale. They can't all be that far apart.

She smirks knowingly, and then starts jotting down item numbers. All three beds, including the frame that Scott had pointed out for Stiles.

"Tables now. I have a feeling we're going to need more than just four chairs."

He smiles at his mother before moving beside her and making his way across the store to kitchen and dining room tables. He does have the best mom. Hands down.

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