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Sometimes Scott says things that make Stiles pause.
They’re little comments. Nothing big. Nothing that sends alarm bells ringing in Stiles’ head. Most of the time it slips through the conversation, small self-deprecating remarks about Scott’s grades, or his time management skills. Stiles mostly lets them slide, because he figures that Scott has to know they aren’t true. Scott is smart, and before the whole werewolf thing started to eat up his life, his grades were amazing. Before the whole werewolf thing, Scott wasn’t juggling being on the first line in lacrosse and finishing all his schoolwork and running for his life and investigating murders all the time.
Except for maybe Jackson Whittemore, everyone’s down for a joke at their own expense, every once in a while, to keep from looking too cocky. Stiles knows he’s got self-deprecating jokes by the boatload, and he and Scott have been friends a long time. That stuff just kind of tends to rub off, he figures.
So it’s little things. Comments that no one hears but Stiles, and that Stiles doesn’t think need correcting.
It isn’t until Scott makes a joke about his leadership ability that Stiles actually starts to sit up and take notice. Because Scott says it like it’s meant to be a joke, but his shoulders are tense, and he doesn’t quite meet Stiles’ eyes when he says it. Stiles knows that the pressure has been mounting lately on Scott, that they all thought things would be back to normal when the kanima issue resolved itself and it hasn’t, and now people turn to Scott when they don’t know what to do. Like Scott would know any better than the rest of them.
Stiles reassures Scott, with a quiet shoulder nudge, that he’s a way better leader than Stiles could be. He jokes that Scott’s the reason they have friends that Scott is leading at all, instead of like before, when it was just Scott and Stiles, going it alone. It seems to reassure Scott a little bit; the tension bleeds from his shoulders, and he gives Stiles a small smile, and Stiles’ chest unclenches. Stiles thinks it’s put to rest, for now.
But every time Stiles thinks it’s settled, every time Stiles thinks that maybe Scott has started to find his balance, it surges back even stronger. Scott refusing to let himself heal because he blames himself for Derek’s death. Scott standing in gasoline with a flare in his hand, looking more hopeless than Stiles has ever seen him, wishing that he were no one.
It keeps happening, and Stiles does all he can to cling to Scott, to try to drag him back. And it’s never enough, Stiles knows that, because Scott has been with him through all of the moments when Stiles has struggled, and Scott always seemed to know just what Stiles needed to hear. But when it was the other way around, in the most important moments, the moments when he needs his words, what comes out of Stiles’ mouth always seems to fall short of what he means.
I love you. You’re not nothing and you’ll never be, you’re good and you’re whole and you’re everything. It wouldn’t fix anything, but Stiles feels the impulse to say them, because he doesn’t think they would hurt, letting Scott know how much he’s needed and loved. But Stiles’ tongue trips up, and he lets the moments pass.
The moments when they both fall just short of communicating to each other sting the worst. Moments like the one where they stare at each other in the rain, and Stiles feels sick to his stomach, with guilt and anger and. Stiles hates them, hates the moments when he looks at Scott and doesn’t know what to say, hates it worse when Scott doesn’t know what to say back. Because no one is perfect, and in the moment Stiles is upset and angry and frustrated, but when the moment is over and Stiles has some distance, he realizes that Scott is probably still beating himself up over it, because Scott sees it as his job to fix everything, and he couldn’t. There was no way for him to.
But they patch things up, they work shit out and they move forward, because that’s what they’ve always done. Stiles starts looking at apartments for the two of them for college, because he can’t fathom not living with Scott, even though Malia warns him that it might not slot into place perfectly with the way Stiles always imagined it would be. She’s right, and she even knows why. Stiles figured it was only fair to tell his girlfriend about all his feelings, about how his vision for the future was expanding around the two of them, but that he could never write over the part of him that had imagined waking up in bed next to Scott and exchanging morning breath kisses while Scott blearily fussed about Stiles stealing all the covers.
Malia understood. She never had a problem with it, just like Stiles never had a problem with the way Malia sometimes talked about what it might be like getting her hands in Lydia’s hair, messing up the lip gloss Lydia spent so much time with.
They both got a little bit shameless sometimes. They egged each other on. It was good. Even when it ended, when they were over, it was always good.
It’s thanks to Malia that things end up where they should be.
Stiles has words on the tip of his tongue that he almost says to Scott, that he really should’ve said to Scott too long ago. He chickens out and then regrets it, because then Stiles is gone, trapped in no man’s land with Peter. He gets glimpses of his friends as they try to piece things together. It isn’t particularly reassuring, but he has faith in them. If anyone can figure this thing out and break him out of this place, it’s Lydia and Malia and Scott.
He doesn’t know that much about how they do it, really; he just knows that they break through the rift and he’s hugging Scott as tightly as he can, burying his face into Scott’s neck and smelling Scott’s shampoo.
Malia’s the one who catches him up after the fact.
“It took all three of us together remembering you to get you out of there,” she tells him. “If Kira were here you guys would be making dweeby power of friendship jokes. Scott said something kinda weird, though, when he was trying to talk Lydia into digging up her memories.”
“What did he say?” Stiles asks, and when Malia tells him, says that Scott seemed to think that his connection with Stiles was something less than the strongest connection Stiles has ever had to anyone in his whole life except, like, his dad.
Stiles’ stomach lurches.
“Fuck,” he says. “I should talk to him.”
Stiles can run through his head all the moments when he didn’t do enough. Didn’t work hard enough to make sure Scott knew his feelings were important and valid. Didn’t reassure Scott or apologize to Scott or make sure Scott knew he was good and important and loved. Stiles knows that part of it is just that Stiles is fumbling his way through things, that they both are. Stiles knows that part of it is trying to find the balance between doing too much or doing nothing at all, and failing sometimes.
Stiles also knows that part of it was fear. That if he said what he needed to then everything would spill out with it.
But, for once in Stiles’ life, he doesn’t think that that’s a problem. He finds the words when he needs them. He sits next to Scott on the hood of his Jeep in the preserve and he lets it all spill out, like he maybe should’ve a long time ago. How good Scott has been, a positive force in his life when he needed someone on his side. How hard Scott works and how much he tries, without even bluffing like Stiles always does to make it seem like it doesn’t actually matter that much. How smart Scott is and how strong Scott is and how steady Scott is, patient and earnest and kind and forgiving.
The rest all comes out, too, how hot Scott is and how much Scott steadies Stiles and how much Scott has to have noticed that Stiles’ heartbeat maybe goes a little funny when Scott pulls Stiles close. How Scott has been the center of Stiles’ world, Stiles’ partner in crime, as long as Stiles can remember. How Stiles can’t imagine how Scott thinks that he’s anything less to Stiles, but that if Scott thinks that, then Stiles can tell him that he’s wrong.
Stiles says the words “in love” and waits for everything to fall apart.
Nothing falls apart.
Scott’s eyes are a little wet, but he’s smiling, with dimples and everything. Stiles gives Scott the biggest hug he can muster, and when he pulls away, Scott leans in, and for a moment Stiles freezes, his breath catching, but then he’s leaning back in, too, to press his lips against Scott’s.
“I’m in love with you, too,” Scott says.
It isn’t an acknowledgement of the rest of what Stiles said, though Stiles knows Scott heard. Stiles thinks that maybe that means he should start saying it a little more often.
But they’re getting that apartment together, and they’re sharing that bed.
Stiles thinks he’ll have plenty of opportunities to make sure Scott knows just how much he is to Stiles.