A/N: Hi there! So, obviously, since you've seen me I started watching teen wolf, and this jumped out at me like you wouldn't believe. It's Scisaac au!week over on tumblr, and I knew I had to contribute something. THis is my contribution! I might add more to it eventually, but school has been kicking my butt so it's staying and this length for now. Also: if you follow me on tumblr and wanted to read this there for some reason, it's posted on my teen wolf side blog, nikkilikesteenwolf. It holds excess feels.

...

The night is dark when it finds them, cold and all-encompassing, but they're pressed together so tightly in the ratty old sleeping bag they found in Scott's garage that they hardly even feel it. In the distance there is a scuffle, but neither hears it, not when they're too busy trying to stifle the sounds of their own heartbeats. One shudders, but they're so intertwined that it's hard to tell exactly where one ends and the other begins.

"Do you miss it?" asks Isaac after the monumental silence settles into something resembling a blanket as opposed to the stifling force it was before. "Home?"

Scott shrugs, and Isaac feels it even though he can't see it. "Sometimes I feel guilty for leaving, but I had to, you know?" A breeze runs between the trees, reaching out with chilling fingers and leaving goosebumps where their faces are exposed.

Isaac shuts his eyes. Shatters of glass, smears of blood, ice-fogged breath, you're worthless. "Yeah," he breathes, "I know."

There is more silence, and it isn't really comfortable, not on the forest floor where the soil is damp and the leaves are sharp, but it's hopeful in a way home wasn't, isn't, never really was. Isaac finds himself drifting off tonight more quickly than the night before, and just as he's on the brink of sleep he hears his name.

"Hm?" he hums, drowsy.

Scott swallows thickly. "We did the right thing. We couldn't be there anymore. I get that."

Isaac feels something akin to regret well on his tongue, acidic, sharply contrasting the hazel sweetness of the forest air. "But?" It almost pains him to ask.

Scott is too still. "I miss them."

Isaac doesn't have the same problem, not at all. He couldn't get away fast enough. He's nothing like Scott, warm and open to everyone he meets, inherently good in a way that not nearly enough people are. If Scott is a flame, then Isaac is the wind that made it flicker, burning slowly until they both are different than they were before. Scott is sweet and whole and Isaac is torn around the edges, broken like a childhood toy that had gathered too much dust on the shelf to be worth anything anymore.

"I miss them, too," is what he ends up saying, but the words are hollow, empty. Mom is gone, Cam is gone, and the man that used to be his father is gone, too. Stiles was always Scott's friend, Lydia sees him as a loser, Jackson broke his arm a few weeks ago at lacrosse practice because he felt 'threatened by Isaac's freakish height.' He has nothing at home, nothing, and he knows Scott feels guilty about leaving people behind but it doesn't even hold a candle to the guilt Isaac feels for dragging him along here.

He means to apologize in some way before it's too late, but exhaustion sweeps over him like a wave and he's asleep before he can even finish wondering why he picks Scott every time.

…

They walk.

They walk.

They walk until they can't remember their names, until the days bleed into each other and they're too exhausted to function and still they walk because the other option requires thinking and they're too tired for that, too. They walk while the biting wind whips at their cheeks and the rain pounds and soaks their jackets and they run out of food but still they walk.

Isaac tries to start a fire. The rain douses it before it even really lights.

Scott tries to catch a squirrel. They end up letting it go because their hearts are soft.

Scott tells him it's okay. They'll figure it out.

Neither of them believes it.

…

It's one week in and their stomachs are growling and finally, finally they manage to find a cabin that someone must use when it isn't winter near Beacon Hills. The back door is unlocked. There is food in the pantry, imperishables. They that might as well be filet mignon for the way Scott and Isaac feast. They eat like they haven't eaten in months, too hungry to spare any thought to the person who owns this place. There are granite countertops; surely the owner can spare some money for more food if they can deck out a log cabin like this.

Scott mumbles something enthusiastically through a bite of jerky and Isaac gives him a look that he thinks must approximate to dude, seriously? by the way Scott sheepishly swallows and clears his throat. "This is nothing like I thought it would be," he admits, but he's grinning ear to ear.

Isaac's brows furrow a little, but a week in the woods breeds patience, so he breathes. "What were you expecting?" Every time he talks lately, he feels this static current, like he didn't actually mean to say what came out at all, and this is no exception. He's been surprising himself. He isn't sure that it's a good thing.

Scott bites his lips and looks pensive, and Isaac bites back a smirk. (Those smirks too often come with eyes that melt, and he can't afford that kind of vulnerability. He's allowed too much already, and he knows what happens when you let people in and they turn on you, he knows).

"I don't know," he says at last, still looking a little confused. "I guess I just expected more insanity. More adventure, you know? But this is cool. This is a lot calmer than home, and I need that. Calm. Like, I don't think I was built for all of that craziness." And then he turns it, because he's Scott, and he's the only one that's ever really cared about what Isaac thinks. "What did you expect?"

He shuts his eyes, lets the meager sunlight warm his cheek through the window. "I thought it would be harder," he says, and that's all.

...

It's two weeks in when they reach a city, and relief is tangible in the air like a cloud of sugar, hanging sweetly near their lips.

Hope blooms again, tentative, and Isaac tries to stifle that smile that always makes him look about six years old. He fails. It splits his face open until he isn't sure he even looks sane anymore, except Scott is grinning back so widely that his soul is pretty much sitting right there in front of him.

And then something shifts, and they're still smiling, still looking at each other, but Isaac doesn't care much for the city they've reached. They'll sleep once more in the forest, he thinks, they'll find water and grab some food and enjoy the simple life for just one more-

And then Scott leans in and finally, finally kisses him, light blossoming from every point of warmth where they're touching, hands in hair and lips against lips and chest to chest, intertwined.

And Isaac isn't thinking much anymore at all.