It looks like a gardening store.

It is, of course it is.

It's just... more too.

A lot more.

Kinda like Stiles actually, and Bishop too.

Human, but... more.

Following Bishop through the curtain and down a short flight of stairs, Stiles had found himself in a small basement room, very much like a library. It was packed with shelves, the shelves packed with stuff: charms and books and ingredients and every little thing you could imagine, and at the very back behind a counter is a wrinkled old witch who looks to be about a hundred-and-four, even though she's got blue streaks in her hair and approximately a dozen rings between her left ear, her nose, and her eyebrow.

Stiles flashes her the rock-on symbol and she flashes him one right back.

Seriously though, he's pretty sure he could stay down there forever. The sensation of being underwater only grows the longer they stay, everything dim and still and cool, and he feels like he can breathe freely again for the first time in a really long time.

He buys purple quartz and white chalk, and a pair of leather gloves that will only be used for working with his plants. Earth too, a sack full of thick, black soil that came from Europe and smells like rain in a cemetery, fresh and clean. There's a tiny, bespelled globe full of light on one of the shelves that mimics the moon's natural orbit, and it runs a little more expensive than his pockets are deep, but he can't resist so he forgoes the plant pots and buys that instead. The witch looks at him like she knows everything about him as she rings him up, and hands him a coupon for fifteen percent off his next visit.

He convinces Bishop to walk him past a Salvation Army on the way back. There's a chipped ceramic tea set going for four bucks, and between eight cups, the creamer pitcher, and the pot, there's plenty of room to get his seedlings started growing. They chatter excitedly between themselves, making plans to sneak out for their binding ceremony the following Friday, and after a quick phone call Bishop promises to take him to the tattoo parlor before the week is out.

It's calm and it's settling to speak with the druid, but also just to talk to a friend, and by the time they get back to the gym Stiles maybe hates his life just a little bit less than he did before.

"Want me to come in with you?" Bishop asks, and Stiles shakes his head, already knowing he'll regret it.

"Nah man, I'm good," he replies, hoisting the bag of dirt he's got balanced on his hip like a small child. "I'm just gonna get all this stuff set up. Text me tomorrow though, we can talk some more about how we wanna do this."

"Sweet," Bishop grins, offering Stiles a fist bump. "Later dude."

"See ya."

Watching the young druid wander off up the sidewalk, Stiles feels his stomach swoop as his soothing magic fades, nausea settling into the pit of his stomach. It's stupid – he can't keep the guy with him forever, that's way too codependent – and besides he needs to get a handle on his shit anyway.

Steeling himself, he drops his shoulders and takes a deep breath, pushes inside with his head held high and his focus narrowed.

He doesn't want to look at them.

Doesn't want to see them.

It's bad enough that the nauseating want has to nearly knock him to his knees as the presence of werewolf, of pack comes crashing down on him like a wave.

His step doesn't stutter, his breathing doesn't falter, and yet he can feel them staring, can feel the confusion and the curiosity and the interest bubbling up beneath his skin till it's like to blister.

He hears his uncle call his name from where he's standing behind the counter but he ignores him, carrying his stuff straight back toward the hallway that leads upstairs to the apartment. He doesn't know why he didn't take the stairs outside, why he didn't avoid all this completely, and something small and dark and sickly in the back of his mind says that maybe he does want this, want them.

That thought is abruptly shot to pieces when he very nearly bounces off a well-muscled chest, the scent of a grave filling up his chest and threatening to choke him, all clogging rot and decay.

Stiles takes a sharp step back, moving instinctively, and he doesn't know quite how it happens but the next thing he does know his hands are empty and held low at his sides, palms tingling like they're full of pins and needles. A werewolf stands directly in front of him, older, handsome, in a slick sort of way, and all kinds of dangerous. He feels his lip rise off his teeth – there's something not right about this man – his heart beats but feels dead in his chest, thin, creeping scars winding up his neck from beneath the v-neck collar of his shirt, blackbluegreen poison seeping through his veins, and...

"Well hello Little Red," the werewolf purrs, his eyes flashing a bright, electric blue, as a slow, wicked smile curves across his mouth, white teeth sharp. "You must be Stiles."

Stiles' heart thumps in his chest and he narrows his eyes, reminds himself of exactly who he is.

"Must I?" he asks sweetly, and the werewolf's grin broadens.

"Your reputation precedes you gorgeous," he replies, and this time it's Stiles' turn to smirk, cold and deadly.

"Apparently not far enough," he answers back. "Piss off Lazarus."

The man looks him over, slow and calculating, and Stiles just waits with his chin held high, even if his knees feel like knocking. He's got nothing, nothing on him or in him or with him right now to help him in a fight, not really, not against a full grown werewolf, not one like this, and he...

But the guys just grinning at him, sexy and dangerous and infuriating, and stepping out of his way like he's allowing Stiles through.

'Fuck you,' he thinks, because whose gym is it anyway? He clearly knows Ulryk, clearly knows the pack that is standing around staring, cluttering up the place, and anyway, what's he going to do? Attack Stiles right there in the open where everyone can see?

Yeah, so he apparently knows who Stiles is - so what?

The rest of them don't necessarily know, and even if they'd heard his little freak-out in his uncle's office that morning (they'd definitely heard), he hadn't exactly spelled anything out.

For all they knew, he was just some weird human who had no idea werewolves were anything more than Hollywood monsters, and for all he knew, there were human civilians in the gym mixed in with them.

Couldn't exactly have a knock-down, drag-out right there on the gym floor could they?

Besides, the whole front wall of the gym is glass, windows between them and anyone passing by on the sidewalk.

Stiles picks his shit up off the floor and walks past the werewolf with his most condescending smirk pasted to his face, forcing himself not to run, to ignore the gaze burning between his shoulder blades until he is upstairs and out of sight with the apartment door locked between them.

Then, and only then, does he allow himself to slide shakily to the floor, to shudder through the watered-down panic attack threatening to consume him.

It's not fair.

It's not fair that he has to know what's out there, that he has to recognize the monsters that go bump in the night without having some compensation, some way to defend himself. He needs his spark back, needs something more than the useless prickling in his palms that comes when he feels threatened, and he had felt threatened.

Not only by that guy – jeezus, his eyes were blue - but by the pack as a whole, all of them there together, waiting...

Swallowing hard, Stiles pushes himself to his feet, gathers his things and carries them into his bedroom.

He's got it the way he wants it now. There's something to be said for coming into a space that's all your own, that's just right. It's calming, settling, and he absolutely does not compare it to returning to his den, because he's had enough of werewolves for one day thank you very much. Opening his laptop, he puts on a classic rock playlist that the plants like and goes to the bathroom to wash his hands, scrubbing all the way up to his elbows. Successfully avoiding the mirror, he heads back to his room, sits down at his desk, and begins.

The plants are one thing he's always loved about this whole mess he's found himself in. When he'd first started learning about what he was, first started going through his mother's things, he hadn't expected to fall in love with botany. There's something so clean about earth magic though, something so magical in the simplicity of plants that he can't help but lose himself in them. As he works filling up the tea set with soil in the afternoon sunlight, he listens hard for the familiar whispers that all plants make, the little songs they like to hum. Without his spark he cannot understand them, but he thinks he can hear the melody all the same.

Wolfsbane goes into one cup.

Mistletoe in another.

The teapot holds mint, the regular kind, because even normal plants have their uses.

That's what he loves most about them, he muses – they can be so many different things.

Food, poison, medicine, bait, a weapon or just plain old pretty – plants always managed to serve a purpose.

As he works his mind keeps itself busy, chewing at problems he doesn't even realize he's mulling over until he comes to a few conclusions. Tonight, he'll go downstairs to his uncle's office and have another look through his files, read up on these wolves that hang around his gym like flies in the summer heat, learn them and learn their faces. He won't be caught off guard again, will be able to hold his own whether his spark comes to him or not, because he doesn't think he can handle being this weak the rest of his life. Best to be prepared for the worst then, if getting his new tattoo this week doesn't balance things out.

He'll have to make up with his uncle. Apologize, maybe – the guy is nice enough that that should be more than sufficient, and then he can 'shadow' him around the gym to learn the place and the routine while really he'll be studying the layout, learning the exits and the tight corners. Ulryk will think he's coming around, or that he feels bad about their fight and is trying to make up for it – one problem solved - and Stiles will have the chance to watch the wolves, to watch the way they move and learn their hierarchy and study their weaknesses.

Yeah, he feels better with a plan.

Finishing up his pots, he places the tea seat in the window where the little seedlings will hopefully catch plenty of sun and hangs the orb full of moonlight above them by a piece of black ribbon. Such a small thing, it should be simple enough to charm it with an easy levitating spell, powered by its own magic to keep it afloat, but he doesn't even have to flick his fingers to know the power just isn't there.

"Wingardium Leviosa," he mutters, flicking it halfheartedly so that it taps against the glass, but of course nothing happens.

Harry Potter's cool and all, but it's not real.

Real magic takes a lot more than just a wand and some words.

Real magic hurts, takes blood and sweat and pain and energy, and an iron will that won't break.

Rubbing his fingers over the swallow tattoo on his forearm, Stiles sighs and grabs a sheet of blank paper, summons up all the good memories he has of his father and starts sketching one for the other side.

If those sketches end up smeared and spotted with tears in some places, his plants aren't talking.