˗ˏˋ⋆ H E A V E N L Y ⋆ˎˊ˗
↳ 𝒙𝒊𝒊. 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒈𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒏
𝘵𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘰𝘭𝘧, 𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘸𝘰
(𝔄𝔟𝔬𝔪𝔦𝔫𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫)
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"I'M SO SORRY ABOUT THE OTHER DAY," STILES SAID, LOOKING INTO Scott's eyes. "I'm trying. We'll get through this. Uh, I know, because I love you. I love you more than––"
"––Uh, did I just walk into something personal?"
Stiles and Scott jumped at the interruption and whipped around to see Gracie. She stood at the bottom of the staircase they were sitting on, clutching her history textbook to her chest. Stiles, grimaced, pulling himself together, and shook his head at how this looked.
"No, no, no, I'm not confessing my love for Scott or anything," he assured her and turned back to Scott. "You and Allison just have to find a better way to communicate."
"Come on, you're the only one that we can trust," Scott gave Stiles sad eyes. "Is she coming to the game tonight?"
"Yes!" Stiles snapped, scowling at the teen wolf. "Okay, message complete. Now, tell me about your boss?"
"He thinks that Allison's family keeps some kind of, uh, records of all the things that they've hunted," Scott explained quickly. "Like a book."
"I think he's talking about a bestiary," Gracie spoke up, tapping her manicured nails against the cover of her textbook.
Scott gave him a confused look. "What?"
"A bestiary," Gracie repeated, looking between Scott and Stiles, who had a look of realization on his face.
Scott chuckled. "I think you mean beastiality."
Gracie wrinkled her nose in disgust while Stiles rolled his eyes at his best friend. That was definitely not what she meant.
"Nope, pretty sure she doesn't," Stiles said flatly. "It's like an encyclopedia of mythical creatures."
Scott's mouth dropped and he stiffened, looking incredulous. "How am I the only one who doesn't know anything about this stuff?"
"Okay," Stiles said. "...you're my best friend, you're a creature of the night, it's kind of like a priority of mine."
"Okay," Scott nodded, trying to come up with a plan. "If we can find it, and it can tell us what this thing is––"
"––And who," Stiles added.
"We need that book," Gracie said what the two boys were both thinking as she thought it over in her head.
"I'll go talk to Allison," Stiles jumped off the stairs and started running down the hallway to find Scott's girlfriend.
In Stiles' absence, Scott and Gracie stared awkwardly at each other. Finally, Gracie spoke up, gesturing down the hall, "I'm going to my locker...so, uh, yeah. Bye."
She was halfway down the hall when Scott caught up to her, falling in next to her. "Wait, just so you know, I'm not mad at you."
"Oh," Gracie smiled slightly. "Thanks..."
She was glad that Scott wasn't mad because she genuinely wanted to be his friend. If she was being totally honest, she hadn't wanted to when she met him, but after everything that's happened in the last three months, she ended up caring about him. She could actually imagine becoming close friends.
"Well, Derek's your family," Scott shrugged as they continued walking to Gracie's locker. "It was kind of a given that you're in his pack."
"Exactly," the Hale girl nodded, glad that they were all finally on the same page. "And just because I'm in his pack doesn't mean that I can't be friends with you and Stiles."
"Right," Scott agreed. When they came upon her locker, Gracie spun in her combination and opened it. "So, how did you know about the bestiary?"
"My family actually has a bestiary," she told Scott as she put her textbook in her locker. "But Derek and I can't find it anywhere. Weird thing is it didn't burn in the fire. It's like it just disappeared. I wish my sister was still here. She would've known where it was. She was kind of good at that stuff."
"That sucks," Scott frowned. "That would have been really helpful."
Gracie nodded. "You're telling me."
Stiles eventually found Allison across campus, where she was sitting by herself with a book. He quickly explained what he and Scott were talking about.
Allison giggled. "I think you mean––"
"––No, I mean bestiary," Stiles interrupted her. "...and the two of you, I don't want to know what's going on in your heads."
"Okay, uhm," Allison cleared her throat, pulling herself together. "Can you describe this thing?"
"Uh, it's probably like a book. Old, worn––"
"––Like bound in leather?" Allison guessed with a thoughtful look on her face as her eyes widened.
Five minutes later, Stiles was running through the school, trying to find Scott and Gracie. When he finally spotted them next to Gracie's locker, talking about something he couldn't hear, he quickly approached them.
"Yes," he told them, patting his shoulder and breathing heavily. "She's seen her grandfather with a book like that."
"Well, where does he keep it?" Scott asked him.
Stiles shrugged. "How the hell am I supposed to know that?"
"Well maybe you should go ask her," Gracie suggested, giving him an innocent smile.
Stiles grunted in annoyance and took off, running back to Allison. After he asked her about the book's whereabouts, he went back to Scott.
"She says–has to be–office..." Stiles panted, collapsing against the locker next to Gracie. She winced, watching him wheeze as he tried to catch his breath.
"Can she get the book?" Scott asked.
Stiles sighed heavily and grabbed Scott's backpack, opening up the pocket where he kept his no-longer-needed inhaler. He grabbed it and squeezed it into his mouth, breathing in the medicine, before going back to Allison.
"You know, drug dealers have been using disposable cellphones pretty successfully for years," he managed to tell her breathlessly.
Allison shook her head. "My parents check every call, email, and text message I send. Trust me, they'd find it."
"All right," he sighed and repeated Scott's question, "Can you get the book?"
Allison blinked thoughtfully. "Not without his keys..."
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GRACIE WINCED FROM HER SPOT NEXT TO BOYD AND ERICA ON THE BLEACHERS, watching as Number #42 on the opposing team tackled and injured yet another one of their Beacon Hills players. The referees did nothing about what was clearly excessive tackling and the home crowd was furious.
"Come on, is that thing even a teenager?" Coach shouted loudly, jumping up from the player's bench. "I wanna see a birth certificate." Sitting back down, he turned to Stiles. "Who or what is that genetic experiment gone wrong?"
"Eddie Abramovitz, Coach," Stiles said, braving the cold in his warm-up suit, likely because he expected that he wouldn't be playing. "They call him 'The Abomination.'"
Coach scoffed. "Oh, that's cute."
On the field, Jackson rushed over to Scott as the other team's lead only started to grow. "McCall, what the hell are you waiting for? This is the semi-finals. Bring that 'roid-head into the ground."
"Me? You're the one who said that I was a cheater," Scott said, reminding him say that constantly when he first found out what he was.
"And that freak of nature being on the field is fair?" Jackson gestured to the guy on the other team who was twice their size and definitely not high-school-aged. "Do something!"
"I can't, not while Allison's grandfather is here," Scott insisted, his gaze flickering over to Allison, who was sitting right beside Gerard.
Just like they planned, Allison had managed to swipe her grandfather's keys off him and handed them off to Stiles as he, for once, subtly walked by.
Meanwhile, on the field, Coach Finstock was running out of players. Teammates were being taken out right and left all from the same player.
"How many fingers am I holding up?" Coach held up two fingers to Danny's face as his player held an ice pack to the back of his head.
"Four," Danny said honestly.
"Say two," Coach practically begged.
"Two."
"Perfect, get out there, come on," Coach pushed him to the field with a big grin. "Get out there." He tossed a lacrosse stick at the player. "...Here have a stick."
"We're still short one player, Coach," one his players said. Coach looked back at the bench and looked around, searching for one specific person.
"Where's Stilinski?"
"Book, book, book," Stiles muttered as he searched through Allison's grandfather's desk. It was empty. "Nothing here."
A person coming through the door made him jump and yelp in shock but he quickly relaxed when he saw that it was Erica. She smirked at him and giggled.
"Hello, Stiles."
"Erica, hey," he greeted her awkwardly, trying not to give away the reason he had broken into the principal's office. "Whatcha doing?"
Erica grinned at him and quickly lunged around the desk, clamping a firm grip on the back of his neck. She pulled him out of the office and started to lead him down the hall, ignoring his struggles.
"Where are you taking me?" He groaned in pain as they walked through the school. "Why are you doing this? Oh, my God, are you going to kill me? I know you're violent but I didn't think you were a murderer."
Erica rolled her eyes and pushed him into the pool room where Derek was already waiting for them with a basketball in hand.
"Stiles."
"Derek."
The alpha glanced down at the basketball in his hands. "What did you see at the mechanics garage?"
"Uh, several alarming EPA violations that I'm seriously considering reporting."
Derek chuckled, not surprised by the teen boy's noncompliance. He let his nails grow before he sunk them into the ball, completely deflating it.
Stiles watched as his eyes went wide. "Holy God."
"Let's try that again," Derek suggested.
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𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑'𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄:
So here's chapter twelve. Should I start posting on a weekly basis? Like I said, I have a lot of drafts and I'm trying not to publish them all at once, so in case I get writer's block I can just post what I have until I get through it. Tell me what you think.