neither_a_nor_b | Keep you up all night if I try to remain calm

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Keep you up all night if I try to remain calm

She'd totally overstayed her welcome, putting off heading back to her building in the cold. As it turned out, a soviet-era Volkswagen without a roof was awful once December rolled around. So she'd stayed at Scott's too late that evening, pushing it to the very edge of sunset on the full moon night. Which was...incredibly stupid to do with a werewolf boyfriend, but his couch was warm and he was warm and it was so cold outside.

It had been reluctantly that she hurried out of the McCall's apartment, running to the Thing in the last bit of twilight and heading back to Chelsea Cloisters. God, the full moon had to be the ultimate buzzkill, Bay thought, unlocking the door and letting herself in. Hanging up her coat, she flicked the living room lights on and off to signal to Daphne that she was home before heading to the kitchen to retrieve the leftover ribs she'd stowed in the fridge.

"Hey girls," she cooed, heading to her room and crouching by her rats' cage, back to the window. "I have some nice bones for you to gnaw on when I finish."

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She'd forgotten her scarf. Scott had found it where it had fallen behind the chair it had been draped over. Normally, he would have just texted her and taken it to her the next day, but it smelled like her, and that scent triggered a deep, aching desire to be near her, to keep her safe and close, to claim her and make sure all knew she belonged to him.

He knew it was the full moon, the wolf was straining to break free as the moon rose, and it took a fair amount of effort to keep it locked away. Enough effort that he didn't really feel like fighting the urge to go to Bay, on top of it. So he grabbed his jacket and stuffed her scarf into a pocket (after one last, long sniff), and headed to the roof.

He'd learned that he could actually travel from rooftop to rooftop fairly quickly, the gaps between the buildings nothing to his speed, his strength, his agility. He leapt them with ease, ignoring the others he could scent up here. Not wolves, but he knew there were other residents of Darrow that traveled this way, and he did his best to avoid them.

He reached Bay's building just a few minutes after she did, slipping his shoes and socks off to allow him to dig clawed toes into the mortar and brickwork. And then he climbed down to her bedroom window, leaving marks in the bricks as he freed one hand and--well, he meant to knock, but ended scraping his claws across the window with a high-pitched screech, instead.

Bay shrieked, honest to goodness shrieked, and bounced onto her feet, spinning around and hurrying to open the window. "Scott! Holy shit! Why didn't you just--"

Holy shit.

"Scott. You're outside my window. I'm on the tenth floor." The second holy shit buzzed in her head. "Oh no, no, no, no, no!" Se was already hurrying to push him back away and out of her window.

"Scott! Full moon!" Bay hissed through her teeth. "Go home! Now!"

"Let me in," Scott said, firm, implacable, just like his body was as she pushed against him. "Let me in, Bay. I need to come in." His eyes glowed amber for a moment and then faded again.

"I'm pretty sure that breaks, like, Full Moon Rule number one," Bay said, still not moving away from the window. "And that this is a terrible idea and that I'm not supposed to let you in because...fangs and teeth and..."

Scott growled in irritation. "I'm not gonna hurt you," he chided, because he would never, ever hurt her. She was his pack, his mate. He would fight to the death to protect her, but never hurt her. "The wolf is under control. I just need to come in," he repeated, shifting his grip to swing his feet down onto her windowsill, long, clawed toes gripping the narrow ledge. "Let me in."

Bay took a nervous half-step away from the window, still uncertain because this was a whole new territory. This was werewolf boyfriend climbing up to her tenth floor apartment.

"Okay. Okay..." She said, sliding the window all the way up. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

Scott swung gracefully through the open window, landing in a crouch on the floor and then straightening, the long, dangerous claws retracting from his hands and feet, turning back into human fingernails. "No," he admitted softly. "But I'm here, anyway." He gave her a crooked smile that made him look more like he usually did than he had since appearing at her window. "You left your scarf at my place," he added, holding his arms out to her.

"My scarf?" Bay repeated. All of this over a scarf? She didn't know whether to laugh or throw a rat ball at him. Bay just shook her head and folded herself into his arms, breathing in the scent of him too. Her own nose was only human but she could still remember how potent it had been in her werewolf days. Even now, to a human nose, he smelled good.

"You know you could have waited until tomorrow."

Scott wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her hair and inhaling deeply. "No, I couldn't," he murmured, muscles that he hadn't realized were tensed relaxing slightly. "I can't explain it. Can we just chalk it up to weird wolf instinct stuff?" He nuzzled her cheek, taking another deep inhale of her scent.

"Weird wolf instinct to come snuggle me in the middle of the..." Okay it was like 5:45 PM. "In the middle of the evening?"

Even as she said it, Bay was skimming her hands up his back, rubbing little circles in with her thumbs.

Scott shook his head a little. "To keep you safe. Keep you close. Protect you," he voiced those instinctive drives that had brought him here. "Stay with you. You're my mate." He blushed a little as that word came from his mouth. "Uh. You know what I mean."

"Protect me from what?" she started to tease. Then he started in with the word 'mate' and she went a little still, processing that.

"Is that how the wolf sees it?"

Scott nodded, looking a little sheepish. "It's...hard to put it into words, because it's not really like it's coherent thoughts. It's...feelings, instincts." He sighed and reluctantly let go of her, moving to sit on the edge of her bed. "I'm already fighting the instinct to turn. I just didn't have the energy to fight this one, too," he admitted softly. "And...I didn't really want to."

Bay sat down on the floor in front of him, her head against his knees. After a second's thought, she grabbed the plate of ribs and held it out to him. It wasn't going to be enough food for either of them, but it was a start.

"So instinct is telling you to be close to...your mate. To me," she parsed. "I really need to be careful about leaving my stuff at your place, huh?"

Scott could feel the wolf beneath his skin, a pressure, an ache trying to get out. He wanted to run, to chase, to catch, to kill. But a plate of ribs would have to do. He grabbed one and started gnawing the meat from the bone. "Something like that, yeah. It had your scent all over it, and...here I am." He sighed, feeling a little stupid now. What would she make of all of this? Had she really known what she was signing up for, dating him?

Bay grabbed two while there were still ribs left to grab, already trying to recall their usual pizza preference and calculate how much she'd need to double it. The math kept her from thinking too much about the implications of all he'd said.

On the one hand, it was kind of sweet that instinct told him that he needed to be with her, but she knew that there could be days where it didn't seem sweet. Where other factors could totally fuck things up.

And besides all that...

"This instinct to be with your mate...You don't have the instinct to be with your mate right now because that's one threshold too many for me right now."

Scott frowned, his teeth sharpening as he chewed at the bone. "Huh?"

"Nothing," Bay said quickly, sucking the sauce off her hand so that she could use her phone to set up their usual pizza order, plus a veggie pizza for Daphne. "Nothing, that was the sound of me overthinking."

Scott's eyes widened as he figured out belatedly what she'd meant. "What? You mean--no. God, no," he said quickly. "You don't--" He exhaled heavily, closing his eyes. "I wouldn't dare. I could lose control," he said quietly.

Bay laughed, a little too much and too nervously, as she enjoyed the taste of her own foot in her mouth.

"Okay, sorry," she said, leaning back against his legs again. "I mean you were getting all primal hunter instincts on me. I wasn't sure how far you were going on that."

Well that was awkward.

"How about I order pizza and stop talking?"

"Yeah, sorry about all of this," he said. "But no, not--that. I mean, not that I don't want to. I just can't," he tried to explain, then nodded. "Pizza's good."

Bay shook her head and moved up, sitting next to him, laying her head on Scott's shoulder and reaching down to take his hand.

"Sorry...just. Like I said before. Back home, none of this existed as far as I knew. I don't know what the rules are, you know?"

Scott snorted quietly. "Until I got bitten, none of it existed as far as I knew, either. If Derek hadn't been around..." he shook his head and squeezed her hand, wondering what the etiquette was for eating ribs while holding your girlfriend, then grabbing another one anyway. At least he was resisting the urge to gnaw on the bones.

"But if you want to learn about it, I'm happy to teach you what I know. All of it. If you want to." And if she didn't want to...then he would try to keep that part of him from interfering in her life as much as he could. He wasn't sure how successful he would be, and it would hurt, but he would do it. For her.

The only reason she wasn't gnawing was because she planned to give the bones to her rats for them to wear their teeth on. She let go, just so they could eat their food without a disaster.

"I kind of had an idea of what it would mean, you know? When we started dating," she said. "I'm not going to make you act like it's not there."

It would have been like asking Emmett to pretend his deafness wasn't a thing. It wouldn't have been fair.

"So...whatever you want to tell me."

Scott shrugged, distracted by the meat. "I mean, you know a lot of it already. So what do you want to know about that you don't know now?"

"You're asking me to say I don't know what I don't know," Bay repeated, nudging him slightly with the elbow. "Maybe just...tell me what you think I need to know."

Scott laughed a little as he realized the way he had worded it was kind of impossible to answer, yeah. "I just meant are there things you have questions about," he clarified, then took a deep breath. "I guess...we can start with the full moon. But get the pizza ordered first." He smiled at her a little and tossed a few clean bones onto her plate.

He should probably text his mom, too. She knew it was a full moon, and he didn't want her to worry.

"You always this straightforward, champ?" Bay sent in the order and then took the cleaned ribs over to the rat hutch, distributing the bones across the three tiers. Of course, that meant that all three of them went for the same one.

Shaking her head at them, Bay moved into the bed, lying on her back with feet flat on the ground. "Okay. The full moon."

Scott nodded, taking her hand in his as he took a few deep breaths. "New wolves...can't control the change on the full moon. They have to be locked up, chained and shackled." He was looking across the room as he talked, at the window, at the sky beyond where the moon would soon be visible as it rose higher than the buildings nearby.

"My first full moon, Stiles handcuffed me to the radiator."

Bay nodded, turning her hand over so they could lace their fingers. By now, she knew why he was taking those deep breaths but said nothing, just slowly stroking her thumb over the back of his hand.

"Did the radiator even work?" she guessed.

Scott shook his head. "Well, the radiator might have worked...but the handcuffs didn't. I broke them." He swallowed, remembering that night still as if it was yesterday, remembering how he'd had no control, he hadn't been himself at all. "If Derek hadn't found me...I might have killed some of my friends," he finished quietly, hanging his head in remembered shame.

"That sounds really scary," she said, still keeping up the slow little circles she was making with her thumb. "For you, I mean."

And right now, he was keeping all of it in check, making it look so effortless. "Is me being here helping or hurting?"

Scott took a slow breath and rolled his shoulders in a shrug. "Both? I mean...being around you helps keep me calm, which makes it easier...but at the same time, you're very distracting," he finished with a half-grin in her direction.

Bay smiled sweetly at him but her words were all mischief. "So I should probably leave you here in the room, huh? Set myself up on the couch. Hands off?"

Scott growled, but the sound was all-human and playful. "I don't think so," he replied, grabbing her wrist gently. "I mean, I'm okay. Really. If I thought you were in any danger, I'd leave," he continued, more solemn.

"I trust you." She really did, Bay realized. Even when there were times when she felt a little in over her head with the werewolf thing, she trusted Scott more than she worried about it.

"Good. Because I will never, ever hurt you," he promised, leaning over to kiss her cheek lightly and resisting the urge to inhale her scent while he was there. "I want to protect you. Even from me."

There was something intense about what he said, something she hadn't expected to find in a relationship for a long time. She fingered the necklace he'd given her and thought maybe she shouldn't be so surprised. Scott loved her and she loved him and that must have meant a lot, with that wolf-loyalty mixed in.

"I believe you." They'd be okay tonight. "Let me put on some music or something and we can just...take tonight easy."

"Sounds good." Scott smiled wryly as he shifted away, making himself comfortable on the bed. "Sorry I startled you earlier, by the way. I'll try to remember to use the door in the future." He laughed softly.

"Yeah, you seriously scared the crap out of me." Bay didn't even bother lying. After all, he'd already seen her scream herself silly. "Maybe a text next time?"

Would there even be a next time or would Scott try and keep away during the full moon.

"No promises, but I'll do my best." He was kind of reluctant to admit just how much he'd been moving on instinct, how much he'd let the wolf take over. He'd just finished reassuring her that he was in control, he didn't want to give her any reason to doubt that.

He laid back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. It was going to be a long night. "Sometimes I think it would be easier to just...let it happen," he said quietly. "Just go out into the woods and transform. But I don't dare." Because if he let go of his focus and let the wolf out during the full moon, he'd be moving on pure instinct. If he happened to run across someone out there, a hunter or a hiker or just someone in the wrong place at the wrong time...he wasn't willing to take that chance.

Bay didn't need to be supernatural to understand Scott's implications and it sounded incredibly rough. She remembered her brief time as a werewolf and the crawling instinct that had hovered just beneath her skin that wanted to get loose and run and scream. To deal with that all the time? Bay reached over and squeezed his hand.

"Maybe we can find somewhere safe sometime. Or, I don't know, start Werewolf Fight Club."

"We? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's gonna be a solo undertaking," Scott said dryly. But he tangled his fingers in Bay's, wanting to prolong that contact. It was safe, calming. It made it a little easier to bear the constant itch of the moon. "But thanks. For understanding, or trying to. It helps, knowing I can talk about it." And thanks to the city, Bay did have at least an inkling of what he meant, he knew.

"Yeah, I don't know if I'm cut out for werewolf fight club," Bay admitted. She turned a little, only so that she could put her phone into the dock-clock on her nightstand and turn on some of her calmer painting music.

"And I get it. I think. Sometimes, there's stuff you need to do alone."

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Keep you up all night if I try to remain calm

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