neither_a_nor_b | Every question opens up a new room in your heart

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Every question opens up a new room in your heart

He'd been avoiding her ever since the incident at the lantern festival. It had been all sweet kisses, followed by fangs and hasty explanations and then he wouldn't text her back. Scott hadn't even given Bay a chance to say it didn't bother her and that she definitely would have liked to keep kissing but nope. He'd just run off and Bay, disappointed, had tried to take the bus home only to end up meeting Scott's mom and hadn't that been awkward?

So she'd given it a whole week before she lost patience. Werewolf or not, he was being kind of a jerk. Which was why Bay was stomping her way over to High Gate Terrace, determined to find him.

"Hey Scott, so, I'm in front of your complex now and you can either come out and we can talk about this," she said into her phone. "Or I can bang on every door until I find yours and embarrass the hell out of both of us. What do you say?"

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The excuses and apologies Scott had readied when he saw who was calling and answered died in his throat. "Uh. I'll be right down," he said, heart sinking. He slipped on his shoes and grabbed a jacket, heading for the door and making his way through the building like a condemned man.

"Jeez, don't look so glad to see me," Bay deadpanned. "I'll get the idea that you don't want to see me."

It was like she'd showed up wih a noose or something, the way he was looking at her.

Scott folded his arms defensively across his chest, then forced them to drop to his sides. "...Sorry. I just--I don't know what to say," he finished quietly, shrugging.

"You just...ran off. You didn't even give me a chance to say anything and then you weren't answering," Bay said, arms crossed over her chest and staying in place.

"Because it really doesn't freak me out, okay? The wolf thing?"

The last words out of Bay's mouth froze Scott's explanations in his throat. "...It doesn't?" he asked, surprised.

Bay shook her head, "Not even a little bit. Last guy I kissed was a vampire." And God had that been a shit storm of awkward. "And twenty-eight."

And then she'd had a spectacular tantrum that got her arrested.

"Look. It was kind of a...massive shock. Not gonna lie. But I like you. Besides, I'm a girl. I am so the last person to judge you about not being yourself once a month."

O...kay. That was going to take some time to process. Not that he should be surprised vampires existed. There were werewolves, kanimas...why not vampires?

He laughed, a little awkwardly. "It's not exactly the same, but I get your point." He blew out a breath and leaned against the building, shoving his hands in his pockets. "I usually have better control than that. It was just the full moon, and...it takes a lot of my focus not to turn during the full moon." He smiled crookedly. "I kind of lost my focus." Because kissing Bay had been very distracting.

Bay didn't mean to laugh. She was supposed to be stern and serious and putting her foot down, but it was kind of like trying to punch a puppy or something. Eventually the plaintive expressions won out.

"You calling me a distraction?"

"Well, yeah. I mean...have you seen you?" Scott asked with a little grin.

"On occasion. And don't think flattery is going to get you off the hook for being weird and not answering for a whole week," Bay said, trying to shore up some of her previous venom.

Scott's grin faded. "I'm sorry. I just...I didn't know what to say, how to deal with it. You're so normal. I didn't know how you'd react." He took a deep breath and said softly, "I'm sorry for underestimating you. I shouldn't have, clearly."

"Scott," Bay's tone was sharp. "I spent two years on a magic island. You have no idea how much not normal I've encountered."

She sighed and leaned back against the ledge, closing her eyes. "I get if you needed to go burn off the excess energy or whatever to calm back down but...you should've given me a shot."

Scott could keep making excuses, but there was no point. "You're right. I should have. I'm sorry I didn't." He gave her a small, hopeful smile. "Still friends?"

"Friends," Bay was pretty sure it didn't take super senses to pick up how saccharine her tone was. She'd just said she really liked him but apparently that didn't accomplish much.

"Yeah. Friends. Look, I'm pretty much Grade A Homogenized human but if you ever want to talk about it or tell me...I wouldn't mind hearing."

Subtle change of subject. Totally not the voice of rejection.

Okay, so 'friends' had clearly been the wrong thing to say, from her tone. He just wasn't sure if he was ready to be anything more than friends with someone yet. He'd thought Allison was the love of his life, and that didn't go away overnight. 'Friends who sometimes make out' wasn't really the kind of thing girls usually wanted to hear, though, so he kept that thought to himself for now, going with the subject change gladly.

"If you want to hear about it...I mean, if you have questions, I'm happy to answer them." He looked around and then added, "Do you want to come up to my place?"

"Yeah, sure. You have coffee?" She wasn't even going to make the joke about her coming back up to his place. He'd already shot them down as Just Friends.

"I mean, I don't really know what to ask."

"Coffee, sure. No problem." Scott opened the door and held it for her. He laughed at her confession. "Is there anything you want to know? If not, I'll just start talking, I guess. Once we're upstairs and the coffee is brewing." Because he really didn't want to just openly discuss his werewolf status in a public hallway.

Bay nodded, letting him close the door behind her. "Start talking and I'll ask questions as it goes, I guess."

"Sure." Scott headed for the kitchen and started the coffee as he began to talk. "So...about a year ago I was bitten while my friend Stiles and I were out in the woods." He turned to face her once the coffee was brewing. "And...ever since then, my life's gotten kind of insane. I mean--for me the insanity started about 9 months before I even showed up here." He chuckled softly and shrugged. "Before that I didn't know things like werewolves existed. I was just normal, like you."

"I mean, I got baby-swapped so normal is incredibly subjective when you're talking to me," Bay said. Granted, her level of weird was purely human, but it wasn't as if she hadn't had her share of messed up truth bombs.

"But so it came from being bitten. Like in the movies?"

"Uh...yeah. I mean, you can...be born..." Scott trailed off, frowning. "Wait, what? You got baby-swapped? What does that even mean?" Maybe it was some weird slang where she was from, or something? Or--yeah, he had nothing.

"Yeah, hospital mix-up. I spent sixteen years with the wrong parents. Or my...adoptive parents. I don't know exactly either. But it means exactly what you think it sounds like," Bay said.

And yet she'd somehow managed to, more or less, get over it. At least it had stopped being the most defining presence in her own life. Sometimes, for days on end, she managed to forget about it completely.

"...Wow," Scott said, blinking. "That's messed up. Maybe you're the one who should be telling me about life back home." He got a couple of coffee cups down and set them on the counter. "How did you find out?"

"Blood test in biology class and–hey. Aren't I supposed to be asking you about he..." She paused and then made claws with her hands.

"Maybe we should do a question for a question, huh?"

"Sounds fair." Scott poured them each a cup of coffee and held one out to Bay. "Do you want sugar or cream--well, milk? And I guess that means it's your turn for a question next."

"Milk is fine. No sugar," Bay said. She chewed her lip and watched as he fixed up the coffee.

"All right, so you got bitten. Then what?"

"Things got weird. I started seeing, hearing and smelling things I shouldn't have been able to." Scott set the carton of milk on the counter and dumped a spoonful of sugar into his own coffee. "My friend Stiles figured out what was happening to me before I did. It was scary at first. I couldn't control it, like, at all. I shifted during lacrosse practice, even."

He took a deep breath and leaned closer to her. "So what did you do after you found out? Did you stay with the wrong family or go to your real family?"

"They're both my real family," Bay said absently, turning her coffee a dark gold with milk. If it was foamed, she thought, she could make a design.

"We met with them. Daphne, my roommate, was the other girl I was switched with. She grew up with my biological mom and I grew up with hers. When we found out, they actually moved in with us."

Bay looked faintly embarrassed, "My dad is, um. He's crazy rich, retired MLB player, so we always had extra room. And a guest house that's basically a real house." Weird how that was the part she felt odd about.

"All right, so how did you learn to control it?" And what had she done at the festival that made him shift back?

"Oh. Sorry," Scott said softly, hoping he hadn't insulted her. He took the rest of it in, nodding along with her explanation and thinking she didn't act like any of the rich people he'd ever met. "That all sounds...like a lot to handle."

He shrugged. "I learned to focus. Stiles helped me, and uh...my girlfriend back home, she helped too." And now he'd lost his focus, except maybe he'd found a new one. Maybe. If he hadn't screwed everything up--though the fact that she was in his kitchen drinking coffee and sharing their lives was definitely a good sign.

Derek had helped too, but it was probably a little early on in werewolf 101 to be outing him to Bay.

"Yeah, it's been...a lot of adjustment." She and Daphne had made it through, though. Honestly, she was kind of proud of everything they'd managed in the last two years, good and bad.

"Sounds like at least you didn't have to go through it alone. Okay, your turn for a question."

"Nope. I've had Stiles by my side through it all, and a lot of others, too. But mostly him. He's like a brother to me."

"So wait. The girl you live with--she's the other baby that was switched? Isn't that weird?" he asked, wrinkling his nose in surprise.

"It was," Bay said. "For a long time we really didn't have a lot in common except for that, but she was also the only other person who understood what it was like."

And now? She couldn't imagine anyone but Daphne being at the other side of all of this.

"So, you're in control now? More or less?"

Scott nodded, understanding that. It was why he'd been drawn to Derek and then later Isaac, despite the misunderstandings and differences between them.

"With the occasional exception, yeah," Scott said with a grin. "I can pretty much change at will." He sipped his coffee, trying to decide exactly what to ask next.

"You know, when you say it like that, I've so got to ask if I can see you transform," Bay pointed out. Her tone was light and teasing, giving Scott room to decide if she was being serious about it or not.

Scott straightened, setting his coffee down as the grin faded, his brow furrowing. "Seriously?" he asked, his tone low. "You want to see?"

The answer, really, was a recklessly curious yes. She'd already seen it partially when they kissed, but it had been dark and he'd booked it pretty quickly after.

"If you want to show me."

Scott rubbed his hands nervously on his jeans and nodded. "Okay." He turned his head away a little, eyes closed as he let the wolf in him surface, fingernails lengthening to claws, ears and teeth growing and tapering to points, his face becoming more lupine as his sideburns filled in. Transformation complete he slowly looked back at Bay with luminous gold eyes, holding his breath as he waited for her reaction.

Bay sucked in a breath as she watched, uncertain if she thought it looked powerful and graceful or just kind of painful. Awesome was definitely a good word for it, as in awe-inspiring.

"Holy shit..."

Scott swallowed, still watching her warily. "...is that bad or good?" he asked, voice a little more gravelly, the words somewhat lisping as they came from a mouth that was no longer quite perfectly shaped for speech.

"Not bad," Bay said quickly. It was mostly just...holy shit. A lot to take in. "I thought I knew what to expect but it's still a whole lot of..."

She struggled for the words, trying to keep track of her thoughts while her eyes roamed over the many ways that Scott had changed.

"It's like expecting something that you only know from a movie. We don't have werewolves in my world, you know?"

Scott smirked, folding his arms. "How do you know? I didn't think there were werewolves in my world, until I became one. Heck, we might be from the same world."

"Yeah, okay, fair point but either way I've never seen a werewolf change before," Bay said.

"And you're still you...more or less?"

Scott nodded. "Still me. Even at the full moon, I'm still mostly me. The wolf gets a little stronger though, so...um. Don't hold anything I say against me, on those days?" He smiled apologetically and pulled some of the wolf side back, ears and hair returning more to normal, though he still had fangs, claws, and glowing amber eyes.

"Like I said earlier," Bay pointed out, putting on a wicked expression. "I'm a girl. I know all about getting irritable and mean once every month."

Scott laughed, letting the rest of the wolf fade and looking like himself again. "I'll hold you to that."

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Every question opens up a new room in your heart

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