CHAPTER NINE: XOXO Gossip Girl
"High school is easy. It's like riding a bike and the bike is on fire and the ground is on fire and everything's on fire because you're in hell."
____
"Are you sure that's what he said?" Luna shook her head, extending her hand to Deaton who tended to the wound on her wrist from Isaac's claws. She was sitting on top of one of the operation tables alongside Isaac, who looked particularly sulky about the marks even though it really wasn't his fault. He was still shaking and weak, a towel tucked tightly around him with messy damp hair curling tightly, the picture-perfect image of a sad puppy. The four punctures of his claws in her skin formed a perfect line, and a bruise was already forming identical to his grip was already forming. It looked a lot worse than it felt. Because all she could feel was numbness, whether it be from the ice cold water or the shocking news about Erica. She honestly couldn't bring herself even care about her wound at that point, too focused on the bombshell that had just dropped on them. "Because I didn't see a dead body." She tried to reason.
Maybe it was possible for the Alpha pack to somehow replace Isaac's memories. Maybe Isaac thinks Erica's dead, but in reality, she's locked up in the vault with Boyd relatively safe. Or maybe his mind was just playing tricks on him. It could have been some other blonde woman he found, not Erica.
"She's not dead!" Derek snapped, pacing back and forth.
Stiles shot him an 'are you dumb?' look before unsympathetically calling out Derek's blatant denial. "Derek, he said, 'There's a dead body. It's Erica.' That doesn't exactly leave us much room for interpretation."
"Then who's the other person in the vault with Boyd?" Derek reiterated. Because when they first overheard Boyd talking, it was clearly with someone else. What other person would the Alpha pack keep hostage if not Erica?
"Someone else, obviously," Stiles retorted. He put a hand up to his temple, completely done with Derek and the entire situation really. "Maybe the Alphas are collecting strays, I don't know!"
Luna glared at him then, her head was telling her to reach over and smack some sense into him, but her heart was telling her that he was a friend whose usual state was compromised of sarcasm and bluntness.
Well.... friend or fake boyfriend, take your pick.
Derek stopped pacing then, turning to her expectantly even though she was far from expecting. She kind of wanted to hide or something under his gaze. "You would've known if Erica died."
And she just stared back at him, completely confused. "How exactly would I have known?"
He glared back at her as if she should already understand him without having to hear an explanation, then rubbed his eyes, clearly trying to restrain his frustration and hold back at snapping at her. "You're nosebleed. The black blood. It was because of Isaac, not the deer. And I know you didn't sleep well that night either, too busy worrying about Isaac, right?"
Luna hopped off the counter, "What are you talking about?"
Because Derek never said anything about the whole nosebleed situation to her before, didn't even mention it again until this very moment. When she'd asked him about it on the phone, he seemed stressed but didn't give her any further details other than the fact that it was unusual. When he met with her in person after she and Scott battled the bald Alpha, he still didn't explain. Yet, it somehow seemed like he'd known all along.
"I wasn't sure until the elevator, but it's clear that you somehow have a sixth sense for myself and Isaac," Derek explained, and as Deaton finished securing the wrapping on her hand, he hummed thoughtfully at the new information as well. "That night when you couldn't sleep, you were sensing that something was wrong, right?" She nodded slowly and Derek continued. "That was the night Isaac was hurt by the Alphas. It wasn't just worry you were feeling; you were directly sensing that something bad happened to him when it was happening. So if that sixth sense is for your pack, then it should extend out to Erica and Boyd as well. Maybe you didn't realize it when they were hurt before, but you definitely would have felt it if Erica died."
But Luna still wasn't convinced. Sure, it was an interesting discovery that she was somehow connected to Isaac and Derek on a deeper level, but it somehow just felt like Derek was grasping at straws trying to make sense of a terrible situation.
"But Derek, if what you're saying is right, then I wouldn't have felt anything," she told him after a moment, shifting uncomfortably. "Because..." She trailed off, counting to three before trying again. She didn't want to be the one to give Derek a reality check but it had to be done.
If not her, then who else?
"Because Erica and Boyd aren't even in your pack anymore. They left, remember?"
There was a heavy silence then. Isaac's shaking seemed to completely stop, and Scott and Stiles looked unsure all of a sudden. Deaton's eyes darted up from his notepad to watch what was happening closely, and Luna held her breath.
Derek's shoulder tensed up completely and his eyes turned colder than Luna had ever seen before. His fists clenched so tightly at his sides that Isaac flinched back, raising his knees from the edge of the table to hold them.
Before he could do something, like maybe punch Luna in the face or something equally as anger-fueled, Scott quickly stepped between them. "We need to focus on rescuing Boyd." He said firmly more to Derek than anyone else. He stood strong and confident while everyone else seemed to cower away from Derek's anger. "Maybe it was Erica talking to Boyd, or maybe it was someone else. Like the girl on the motorcycle, the one that saved Isaac."
He turned to look at Isaac and give him an encouraging smile until the boy relaxed and uncurled. Much like a parent protecting a child, really.
Isaac shook his head, dismissing the idea immediately. "No, she wasn't like us. And whoever was in the vault with Boyd was."
"Well, then it has to be Erica. Who else is a werewolf in Beacon Hills?" Luna quickly interjected. It wasn't that she really believed it, but it was more to see Derek's rigid anger melt away. Thankfully, it seemed to work. Derek relaxed ever so slightly, looking a lot more thoughtful than angry.
Stiles' eyebrows furrowed and he straightened up as he considered Isaac's words. "What if that's how Erica died?" He said suddenly, and Luna shot him a sharp look because just like that, Derek's shoulders tensed up once again, her prior agreeance with him completely forgotten. But Stiles just continued on, clearly unable to read the room for the life of him. Just another one of his many amazing attributes alongside his sarcasm and bluntness. "They, like, pit them against each other during the full moon and see who survives. It's like Werewolf Thunderdome." He suggested, making everyone stare open-mouthed at how barbaric that was.
What was even worse was the fact that Stiles could very well be right.
Derek frowned, glancing between everyone. "Then we get them out. Tonight."
"Be smart about this, Derek," Deaton cautioned for the first time since Isaac stepped out from the tub. "You can't just go storming in."
"Well, there has to be some way in that they wouldn't expect," Luna commented, thinking back to the memory of Isaac. He was on the second floor at the start. "Maybe on the roof?" She suggested weakly. Then, almost every movie about an evil villain and their lairs popped into her head at once. "Or maybe behind a dumpster like in the movies?" Her cheeks flushed when everyone turned to stare at her. "Well, Isaac got in somehow!"
"How would we climb onto the roof?" Scott asked first, deciding to be the worst person ever and fueling her embarrassment. "We need an actual plan."
"How do we come up with a plan to break into a bank vault in less than twenty-four hours?" Derek growled again.
Luna was starting to think that was all he did nowadays.
"Uh, I think somebody already did," Stiles answered, leaning against the steel table with his phone raised up to show them a news article on the display. "'Beacon Hills First National closes its doors three months after vault robbery.' It doesn't say here how it was robbed, but it probably won't take long to find out."
"How long?"
"It's the internet, Derek," Stiles said like it was obvious. Derek shot him a harsh glare and Stiles immediately cowered away, hiding behind Luna and typing on his phone obnoxiously. "Okay, minutes."
____
Minutes turned out to be a considerable understatement on Stiles' part.
When Sheriff Stilinski pushed open the door of his son's bedroom that next morning, he hadn't anticipated finding his son passed out in a rather uncomfortable way, sprawled out with his face pressed to the carpet amid a sea of papers, articles, and photos about a bank robbery of all things. Nor had he expected to find Scott slumped in a chair nearby, mouth wide open and papers all over him. And he definitely did not remotely expect to find his son's girlfriend, Luna, fast asleep on top of the covers on the bed with her hair resembling a complete bird's nest, one hand in a bag of hot Cheetos and the other gripping a highlighter tightly like a lifeline. The printer was still hard at work through it all, spewing out more pages to the floor in a chaotic mess that seemed to always follow Stiles, and the Sheriff let out a sigh, shaking his head in resignation rather than disbelief.
He knocked on the door.
"Guys, wake up. You have school," he called out. There was no response, save for a slight twitch from Scott, who was still dozing. He tried again, raising his voice. "Guys, get up. GUYS!"
In an instant, the three teenagers jolted to life in just as much of a mess as the way he'd found them moments prior. Stiles whipped his head up, a paper stuck to his cheek. Scott nearly toppled out of his chair, barely catching himself on the edge of the desk before he could fall over. Luna jerked up suddenly, and the hot Cheeto bag in her hand went flying up as if in slow motion, sending Cheetos raining down on all of them.
The Sheriff simply stood there and stared, and they stared right back at him, bleary-eyed and disoriented.
He watched as Luna lifted her red Cheeto dust-printed fingers to rub at her eyes, then as Stiles did an abrupt nose dive to stop her before they could make contact. He watched as the momentum of the jump on the mattress sent both teenagers crashing to the ground in one big heap with Stiles landing right on top like the complete gentlemen he was raised to be, absolutely not taking Luna's fall and instead using her as a nice human cushion.
Luna let out a loud pained sound, which was expected, while Stiles seemed to freeze up and stare down at her awkwardly. He went cross-eyed at how close they were, merely inches apart. Meanwhile, she was too busy trying to elbow him off to notice.
The Sheriff blinked at the pair, exchanged a single blank look with Scott, before turning on his heels to leave.
The last he wanted to do was catch another glimpse of his son embarrassing himself enough for everyone in the room.
"I'm heading to the station. Get to school."
"Dad!" Stiles' head whipped toward the door, calling out to him right before he completely left the room. "Heather?" He asked a little hopefully, still very awkwardly on top of Luna. And she looked straight up at him, her brows knitting together. Because wasn't Heather the girl that kissed him at the party? Before she could ask about it though, Scott caught her eye over Stiles' shoulder and subtly shook his head.
The Sheriff offered Stiles an apologetic smile, shaking his head. "No word yet."
As he stepped away from the door, Stiles rolled off of Luna with a frown and grabbed a handful of papers and threw them toward the trash. The awkward moment from before was completely ruined. Completely forgotten. "Ten hours and nothing."
Meanwhile, Luna's gaze zeroed in on the sliver of skin that peaked out from the bottom of Stiles' shirt as he reached up and stretched. The small happy trail that disappeared under the waistband of his jeans was like a magnet.
God, she was weak.
"We'll find something," Scott reassured him, kicking her with his foot after clearly noticing the ogling.
Luna didn't even have to decency to blush. She just raised a single brow to wiggle at him and he pushed her over with a snort.
Scott had to wonder whether he was as bad as Luna and Stiles seemed to be when he was dating Allison. They couldn't have been this bad, right?
Stiles just groaned at the side, not noticing anything out of the ordinary in favour of rubbing at his tired eyes. "Finding something doesn't make Erica any less dead. Or Boyd any less about to be dead."
Luna nodded in agreeance, reaching over to grab a random paper to use as a makeshift napkin for her hands. "We wasted ten hours. Ten hours we could've spent going to the bank and getting it over with. If we die, then we die. That's just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes, you know?"
Scott frowned at them both. "We've still got time."
Optimism: something Scott seemed to have a never-ending supply of for some god-forsaken reason.
It was a trait that Luna always admired about him, one of the qualities that made Scott so attractive in her eyes before. He consistently saw the silver lining in everything, never one to give up. It contrasted sharply with herself, who always seemed to see the worst in everything. But she realized, as she watched him coax her and Stiles' bad moods into something more light, that maybe it wasn't admiration that she had in Scott before, but rather jealousy.
Because living a life as an optimist seemed far superior to living a life filled with constant doom and paranoia lurking around every corner.
"Is this whole 'remain optimistic in the face of total and utter disaster' thing part of the 'Be a Better Scott McCall Program?" Stiles quipped, raising an eyebrow at Scott and thinking the exact same thing as Luna.
He was also more of a glass-half-empty kind of guy.
"Uh," Scott sheepishly grinned at them. "Not if it doesn't work."
Stiles, who was systematically gathering up all of the scattered printouts, suddenly froze. "No, no. It works." He shoved the piece of paper on top of the stack in Scott's hands before darting away. "Dad! Dad—" His shouts were cut off as he ended up tripping right over Luna who was crouched low to the floor painstakingly picking up each individual Cheeto that went flying everywhere. He somehow managed to catch himself in the doorway and even the little stumble didn't deter his determination to bound down the stairs like a maniac. "Wait!"
Luna and Scott stared at the door in a daze before both peaking at the article that had him so worked up in the first place. It was an old photo of the bank robbers caught by Sheriff's Deputies. One of the deputies pictured front and center was none other than a somewhat younger Sheriff Stilinski.
Both of their heads slowly turned to face each other to share a similar spark of realization before they hurried after Stiles.
Maybe the ten hours they spent researching weren't as much of a waste as they'd previously believed.
Maybe they were actually on to something.
____
The doors of Stiles' jeep clicked open, and Luna all but tumbled out after Stiles and Scott, a coffee cup miraculously balanced in her hand through it all. It was only saved because of the lid placed securely on top of it, otherwise, the interior of the Jeep would've had a completely new makeover and Luna's relationship with Stiles would have probably ended right before it could even start.
After interrogating the Sheriff about the bank robbery, she somehow managed to convince Stiles to make a quick pit stop to pick up breakfast and coffee. Of course, she made sure to drop the "girlfriend tax" line that Stiles first promised about treating to her food back when they started the whole fake dating thing, and he had no choice in the matter but to hold his tongue and begrudgingly agree.
Much to the amusement of Scott who somehow also managed to convince Stiles to pay for his breakfast sandwich and muffin in addition to Luna's, calling it the newly coined term "third-wheel tax".
But other than the girlfriend tax—and Scott's new third wheel tax—they both had real excuses which were also ironclad in persuading Stiles. They needed to be energized and in optimal shape for the escape plan later that night. Food was only a means to an end.
All in all, Luna was practically buzzing with energy, already on her second cup of coffee that was packed with an astronomical number of expresso shots. Her senses were so heightened, that Scott's voice seemed to be extra loud to her right. "Alright, so we meet at Derek's at five to go over the plan, and we don't start until dark."
"Okay, so what do we do until then?" Stiles asked, locking his car manually with the key in the door handle as if his piece of shit jeep would somehow be the prime target for someone to try and hijack out of all of the other perfectly fine cars parked around them.
Very unlikely, but neither Scott nor Luna said anything about it. They just watched as he stepped back and glared at some kids nearby like some old man protecting his lawn before joining them to walk up the sidewalk to the school.
"Right now? We've got English." Scott replied, pushing open the double doors of the school for the three of them.
Luna groaned into her cup, "Why'd it have to be that class first? The new teacher gives me the creeps, even more than Harris last year and that man was pure evil."
"What? She seemed fine to me, a little young but whatever. And you love English!" Stiles remarked, bumping harshly into a random freshman student who seemed to suddenly stop and stare at them. In fact, most of the freshmen seemed to be staring at them. He narrowed his eyes, turning back to Luna and Scott. "Why are these losers staring at us?" He asked rather loudly, causing everyone to quickly avert their gaze with ducked heads, their cheeks flaming in embarrassment.
Luna scoffed at him, her free hand moving to slap him on the back of his head. "Hey, you're a loser too. You don't have room to talk."
"Uh, no!" Stiles protested, shoving past some more freshmen. "I'm a nerd, not a loser. Those are two completely different things."
"Well, one could say that having Scott as your only friend might classify you as a loser," She teased back, sidestepping when he reached out to smack the back of her head in retaliation.
"Oh yeah? Well, Scott's also you're only friend so your entire argument is invalid and therefor—"
Scott, standing behind the pair, rolled his eyes at their bickering. "I swear, you guys started dating and somehow managed to become the same person."
Both Stiles and Luna whipped back to face him in unison, exclaiming together, "We are nothing alike!" They froze, then exchanged incredulous looks with one another. "That doesn't mean anyth—" Still, they spoke at the the same time and stopped again, turning fully to glare now like the other was to blame when they were both being idiots. "Stop copying me!" They practically shouted.
Standing nearby at the bottom of the small staircase off to the side of the hallway, a boy with tousled brown hair and striking green eyes couldn't help but overhear their conversation and couldn't seem to help himself from interjecting. "Wait, you're dating him?" This time, all three of them—Scott, Stiles, and Luna—turned to give the guy an incredulous look that made him shy away immediately, face flushing.
Stiles was already offended, quick as always to retort. "Hey, what do you mean him, you little shit! I'm a complete catch—"
"No! I didn't mean it like that. Just... sorry for interrupting. I was just surprised because everyone's been saying that she was single and stuff so..." he trailed off awkwardly, his words losing their strength the more the three friends just stared blankly at him.
Stiles' eyes narrowed and Scott looked just as confused as ever, but it was Luna who finally spoke up, "Wait, what do you mean everyone's saying I'm single? Who's everyone?"
The boy raised his head then, a hint of confusion in his expression. "Haven't you seen the Beacon Hills Confessions page on Facebook? It's basically been a trending topic since the first day of school."
Oh, Luna was definitely aware of the Facebook page. The one where students would send in anonymous posts about just about everything. From leaked test answers, to the latest drama between the lacrosse players, to the newest relationships, to random personal confessions. All the juicy gossip and news can be found in the forums. Even she had to admit that she would occasionally browse through the page like it was the morning news or something. But lately, with her life taking a complete supernatural turn, she hasn't had the time to catch up with the page in a long time.
But never in her entire life did she think she'd be one of the hot current headlines going around. And the fact that it wasn't something negative was definitely a stroke to her inflating ego.
"Really?" Luna asked, a small smile forming on her face. Call her an attention seeker but going from a nobody to a somebody had a certain appeal. It was like rising up from the depths of hell as a new person! Hell being whatever the fuck last year with the crazy lizard was. "That's kind of nice, actually," She commented, glancing at the boy over the lid of her coffee cup as she took a thoughtful sip to hide her stupid goofy smile.
The boy shyly smiled back at her, his confidence growing now that Luna smiled at him. "Yeah... By the way, I'm Lucas. Maybe sometime we could—"
"Good talk, Lewis, but we're late." Stiles suddenly interrupted, throwing an arm over Luna's shoulders and hustling her off and away from the conversation, ignoring how she choked a little on her drink. He strong-armed her down the hallway, all while calling back over his shoulder, "And by the way, she's definitely not single, okay? She's dating me, Stiles! So feel free to spread the word on your little Facebook blog, and maybe enlighten all of the other losers as well!" He continued marching Luna along but turned back one more time, "And by the way, I'm a complete catch! A total stud! She can't get enough of me, actually, all over me and—"
"Stiles!" Luna scolded him, elbowing him in the ribs for being an idiot. Well, for being an idiot and for forcing her small legs to stumble along with his long strides. Despite the lid on her cup securely in tact, hot coffee still managed to slosh out through the drinking hole to dribble down the sides and over her fingers.
Now her hand tingled with slight pain, was sticky, and she wanted to die. Great!
Stiles just grumbled beside her, "I literally posted on Instagram that we were dating. How did nobody see that?"
"Oh, people did see it." Luna snorted, wiping her hand on Stiles hoodie which he didn't seem to notice, too busy pouting. "I'm sure your ten devoted followers made sure to spread the news far and wide."
Stiles gave her a side-eye before proceeding to intentionally nudge her enough for her to let out a yelp and a cry out as her coffee suffered another mishap.
Meanwhile, still standing with Lucas, Scott rolled his eyes yet again at the pair at the end of the hallway before turning to the boy. "I'm sorry about them. They're still in the honeymoon phase," he muttered apologetically as if he didn't just crush the boy's spirits completely. He didn't spare him another glance as he jogged after his friends.
Lucas watched him leave with a small frown, pulling out his phone and opening up the confession page. And when he typed out his own anonymous tip about Luna not being single, contrary to popular belief and displeasure to all, he made sure to add a sad emoji at the end of it as well.
A subtle expression of sympathy for his fellow classmates, all of whom commented their own sad emojis in response.
____
Now, contrary to the playful back-and-forth banter Luna was able to have with Stiles earlier in the day, when it finally came time to head over to Derek's loft and go through their very much non-existent plan, the mood had dampened significantly.
Scott, Derek, Peter, Stiles, and Luna were huddled around a cluttered work table where Stiles unrolled a huge poorly constructed blueprint of the bank for them all to see. Somehow, between free periods, he'd managed to illegally download and print it out for them. Even though it sported a distracting 'example' watermark all over it, they'd take what they could get.
"Okay, see this?" Stiles asked, glancing between Scott and Derek who were looking over his shoulder intently. His finger pointed at a section of the blueprint. "This is how they got in. It's a rooftop air conditioning vent that leads down into the walls of the vault, which is here."
With a bold red marker, Stiles circled a vague blob on the blueprint that, if Luna tilted her head a little and squinted, could maybe resemble a vault.
"One of the robbers was lowered into this shaft. Now, that space is so small it took them about twelve hours to drill into that wall, which is stone by the way. Then, throughout the rest of the night, they siphoned all of the cash up through that one little shaft in the wall to the guys on the roof. Boom!" Stiles finished, smiling proudly up at Derek who looked just about as unimpressed as ever.
"Can we fit in there?" Scott asked, his eyebrows furrowing as he took in all of the information. From next to him, Luna couldn't help but notice the stray hairs he had around them. She just wanted to pluck them away and give him the perfect brow arch.
Not that that was relevant to the conversation at hand.
It was the caffeine. After the first one in the morning with a shit ton of expresso shots in it, she had two more afterwards. She felt like crazy frog.
"Yes," Stiles nodded. "We can. But very, very barely. And they also patched the wall, obviously, so we're gonna need a drill of some kind. I'm thinking maybe a diamond bit—"
"Look, forget the drill," Derek interjected, interrupting Stiles and rolling his eyes at the idea. Stiles, in turn, had the gall to look extremely offended, casting everyone an incredulous as if asking 'Can you believe this guy?'. "If I go in first, how much space do I have?" Derek asked.
Stiles snorted, "What do you think you're gonna do, Derek?" He raised a taunting eyebrow. "Punch through the wall?"
Derek crossed his arms, giving Stiles the usual unimpressed look. "Yes, Stiles. I'm going punch through the wall."
"Okay, big guy. Let's see it then. Let's see that fist. That big ol' fist. Come on, get it out. Don't be scared, big bad wolf." Stiles baited, moving to stand in front of Derek. He waited and watched as Derek slowly balled his hand into a fist and held it up for him to examine. "Yeah, look at that."
Luna shared an exasperated glance with Scott across the table, but neither of them moved to intervene. Derek's fist, they noticed, was roughly the same size as Stiles' weirdly small head. Or, maybe it just looked small in comparison.
How Stiles always seemed to get himself into these kinds of situations was an honest-to-God wonder.
Stiles placed one hand on Derek's elbow and the other a few inches away from his fist. "Okay, see this? It's maybe three inches of room to gather enough force to punch through a solid—"
Before he could finish his sentence, Derek slammed his fist against his palm with enough force that the sound alone was enough for Scott and Luna to wince in sympathy. Stiles' whole body seemed to feel the effect of the impact and he went practically flying over the table.
"Mother of God," Stiles groaned. He let out a few of, what he'd later deny, whines of pain before attempting to stand upright again but failing. He did, however, manage a very weak, "He can do it."
He turned to Luna with a pout afterwards as if he was expecting her to scold Derek on his behalf or something and she just rolled her eyes. Instead of defending her 'boyfriends' honour, she slipped an arm around his waist to support him and morosely patted his hurt hand. "There, there."
"I'll get through the wall," Derek ignored them, his gaze shifting back to the blueprint. "Who's following me down?" he asked, turning to look expectantly at Scott, Peter, and Luna.
"Don't look at me," Peter quickly dismissed, shaking his head. "I'm not up to fighting speed yet, and honestly? With Isaac out of commission, you're not looking at very good odds for yourself."
Luna turned to him with a fierce glare. "As if you could ever contribute anything worthwhile, even at your peak. Why are you even here? Why don't you crawl back into whatever hole you came up from?"
"Oh, well, where's the fun in that?"Peter retorted, raising an eyebrow and gazing at her with the same curious and calculating look he'd been giving her ever since they first met. Like Luna was nothing more than a little science experiment he was observing.
"So I'm supposed to just let them die?" Derek snapped over at Peter.
Peter shrugged indifferently. "One of them is already dead."
"We don't know that."
"Do I have to remind you what we're up against here? A pack of Alphas. All of them killers. And if that's not enough to scare your testicles back into your stomach, try to remember that two of them combine bodies to form one giant Alpha. I'm sure Erica and Boyd were sweet kids. They'll be missed."
"Could someone kill him again, please?" Stiles asked.
Peter shook his head, trying again. "Derek, seriously? Not worth the risk."
"What about you?" Derek asked, ignoring Peter entirely and looking to his left where everyone else was.
Stiles' head perked up and he pulled away from Luna's side, "Yeah, if you want me to come I can—"
"Not you," Derek huffed, his fist clenching as if he were contemplating a second round of Stiles-punching, this time in the face. He closed his eyes briefly before turning to Scott.
"I don't know about Erica. But if Boyd's still alive, we have to do something." Scott said, glaring at Peter, "We have to try."
"But?" Luna asked, noticing that his sentence was left off a bit short.
"Who's the other girl? The one locked in there with Boyd?"
Derek paused before pushing off the table. "I guess we'll find out." He directed his attention to Luna then, nodding his head toward the door. "We need to go now. The moon's gonna be coming out soon, and we need to get there as soon as possible."
Stiles, in the meantime, looked up at Luna with furrowed eyebrows, a hint of confusion clouding his expression. "Wait, you're taking her?"
Luna frowned in response. "Is that a problem?"
"Um, no," Stiles scratched the back of his head a little nervously, knowing that he was treading on a very thin line already considering the whole belief thing that happened at the clinic. It was different now though. He fully believed in her, but there was something else. Sending Scott off, his literal best friend, wasn't something he even needed to bat an eye at. But having to send Luna off felt different. Unsettling. It was like when he had to let his dad go off to help in a dangerous situation that came with the job description of being a Sheriff. It made his stomach churn and his hands twitch as if he should be doing something more than just watching the events unfold in front of him.
He was uneasy. No, not just uneasy. He was worried.
He pursed his lips though, grappling for the right words. Unfortunately, what he blurted out was far from what he wanted to say and he had to cringe at himself right after. "I just mean that using your powers during training is different from the real thing. Are you sure it's a good idea?"
Luna, although she knew that Stiles wasn't saying it as a bad thing, her arms still crossed in front of her and her eyes still narrowed as she trained him with a flat look. "What's the point of training if I can't use my powers when we need them? I'll be fine."
Stiles hesitated but when he looked over a Scott for reassurance or maybe to intervene or something, he just nodded firmly as well. Because, after all, Scott's seen what Luna could do back in the elevator. He knew that she would be helpful. And even if she did have some moments of weakness, he and Derek would be there to make sure nothing happened.
They were only as strong as their weakest link, and Luna was no weak link.
The three of them moved away from the table, heading to the door, but Stiles stopped Luna with a hand on her arm. She turned back to face him just about ready to bite his head off be side now was not the time to be pessimistic, but he just smiled weakly at her. "Be careful." He told her seriously. There was more he wanted to say but having the intense eyes of three werewolves on him while his nervous pounding heart rate was no doubt loud in their ears made him want to sink into the floor. To help alleviate his sudden embarrassment, he added on as an afterthought, "Watch out for Scott too. I really don't want to have to clean my seats again because he bleeds out all over them."
Still, his eyes stayed locked in Luna's, never once straying.
Behind her, Scott just rolled his eyes, knowing damn well that Stiles was not even remotely thinking about him at the moment and was trying to tell Luna in his own obtuse way to stay safe, but he let it slide.
Meanwhile, Luna's eyes scanned Stiles' face, noting the small lines of worry around his eyes. After a moment she just nodded. "I promise. Nothing bad will happen, we'll be out with Boyd and Erica before you'll even know it."
Of course, none of them realized that they just sent Derek, Scott, and Luna into a real-life werewolf thunder dome.
____
Rewritten as of October 10, 2023
Randomly wrote that Lucas scene for absolutely no reason but to give this a little cheesy touch before shit goes down at the bank in the next chapter. I was rewatching Teen Wolf with my sister and let me tell you, this show is extremely cheesy in and of itself. What would this fanfiction be if I didn't include some as well? I hope it was at least a little amusing lol.
Random side note: The whole confession page idea was taken directly from my own high school, and now university, experience. It was also loosely inspired by Gossip Girl because of Leighton Meester: my absolute beloved <3