The thing about all those upstart thieves you see in prisons or on the television is that they're not real thieves.

Oh, they steal things, that's true, but the point is, ridiculously long story short, that they get caught. The ones that get caught are basically just those friggin' idiots who hold up banks or gas stations and the police have it completely and utterly wrong, honestly, because real thieves? Real thieves, the Families, they don't get caught.

Why? Because they have rules, duh.

"There's a difference between being a thief and being somebody who steals things." Stiles says matter-of-factly.

He says it like this isn't the umpteenth time he's said these exact words to the other boy, like this isn't something that's common knowledge or at least something that should be common knowledge. Like it isn't completely obvious.

"And if you try and steal this?" He continues, gesturing to the blueprints rolled out haphazardly on the bar top like nobody could come through the door at any moment and see them planning a crime. "In this century? You'll get caught and that'll prove you're nothing but an idiot who steals things." He raises an eyebrow to accentuate his point as he slurps from his cup of coffee because it's a very good point that Scott has apparently failed to grasp.

Scott just didn't understand that thievery was sacred and not just a way to get some quick cash (especially considering the long-cons were the best kinds of cons, his Babcia would always say with a glint in her eye, and a lot of the things they steal rarely ever see the light of day again), being a thief was about integrity, instinct and using your brain.

Seriously, rule number one; 'never get caught' and if that wasn't the simplest freaking instructions in the history of the world then he didn't know what was.

He huffed in annoyance because this was way past just 'getting ridiculous'.

Let nobody say that Stiles Stilinski didn't appreciate a good con or that he didn't absolutely love a heist that took ridiculously awesome precision and planning to get just so, but when Scott burst through the doors of The Beacon an hour ago, he'd maybe been expecting some trouble-free mooning over that Argent girl he'd met last month in France (yes, Argent, as in; entire family full of Interpol agents, various other alphabet agents and private detectives? Well done, Scott) or something of the like, he definitely hadn't been expecting an excited exclamation of "Stiles! We need to steal this so Allison's family can be distracted enough for me to go visit her!"

With blueprints to the Louvre.

And a printed out photo of the Mona Lisa.

Because only Scott's version of a 'distraction' could land them in a top-security prison for the rest of their lives.

People don't just steal the Mona Lisa because they needed a distraction to see a girl they've barely spoken to; especially considering the copy in the Louvre was just that, a copy. People steal the Mona Lisa because they're insane Italians carpenters or because they'd created a perfectly good reproduction out of their living room and wanted to see if anybody would notice the difference — like his grandfather.

He could make this completely valid point known to the other occupant of the otherwise bare barroom but frankly, Stiles thinks it'll be more fun to just give fifty other reasons why it's a totally, horrifically bad idea than the one it would take to end this before it even began.

And his dad would kill him if he told Scott that the Mona Lisa thousands of tourists saw a day was a replica created by Stiles' own Dziadek during 1911, when the original had been stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia and then re-stolen and switched with a fake by his grandfather. And if his dad doesn't kill him, Lydia would.

Happily.

And she'd get away with it too, the genius bitch.

Since they'd met each other, Scott McCall had proven to be an alright getaway driver, a mediocre liar and a frankly terrible planner; the only thing really going for him was that he was also a fantastic friend and willing to follow Stiles through anything (stupidly bad decisions not only included, but paramount).

These were the reasons for the fuss Stiles kicks up whenever anybody questions bringing in an outsider without marrying them or some sort of fool proof contract between them is probably the only reason he was still around. As a general rule, the Family didn't really have friends outside of themselves.

Sure, they had associates or middlemen, sometimes employers or employees but cousins were customarily best friends with cousins, siblings were partners in crime (literally) with siblings and marriages lasted forever — nobody was really allowed to get too close.

The Stilinski's were one of the oldest Families left, however spread out they were nowadays. The Hale's were probably the largest left, followed by the Finstock's (but they were all batshit crazy so people didn't like talking about them much).

There were only five main Families left.

There were smaller branches of course, they weren't so elitist that they breeded with each other or anything because firstly, ew, and secondly, their families were now modern enough to let people get married outside the Family — something that was a lot different back in the fifteen hundreds — as long as their future spouses were trusted enough to bring into the fold.

Nevertheless, even if most still remained with the Family, whether they married outsiders or not, there were some that left.

These smaller families were usually made up of people going off and mixing with the general public instead of adopting their spouses into the Family; the Boyd's were a perfect example in that they were part of the main Stilinski clan until Louisa Stilinski fell in love with Vernon Boyd the first during the American Civil War and popped out a small army of her own.

The Boyd's mainly stayed in America, in fact most of the branched out families ended up doing that, staying in one place or another. Stiles personally thought it was a bit unnatural for a Stilinski — no matter how far removed from the main Family they were — to have only one home. He liked his houses in nearly every country, his safety deposit boxes filled with shiny and expensive things on every continent; he couldn't imagine life any other way.

"But why can't we?" Scott whines, his face doing that disappointed-sad-puzzled thing that Lydia hates and Stiles suspects is absolutely fake because nobody can be that dopey looking without serious practise. "We're totally good enough."

He pointedly places his coffee cup onto the counter, the noise it makes is loud in the otherwise silent bar, "Scotty," He says, "This isn't National Treasure, stealing the Mona Lisa would take months to plan." He shrugs, "Maybe years if we don't want to go to jail."

His best friend's expression turns even more depressed-looking and as he looks at Scott's face, Stiles can definitely feel his resolve crack just a bit in the face of that puppy dog look, "No." He says.

"I won't let you do it." He says.

"You won't survive a prison sentence, dude." He says.

"God-damn you." He says.

Probably mere seconds pass before he groans loudly, "Alright then." He tells the other boy reluctantly. "We can steal something else, I guess. Something smaller." At Scott's wide grin he adds, "I'll get my cousin on it, though, because, and I'm sorry about this, dude, but you're actually not as good as you think you are at this."

It's true, Scott sucks at life, especially this life. He blushes and sweats and stutters when caught in a lie and then goes and falls for the one person he shouldn't.

From the grin that continues to light up his stupid face, Scott's too happy they're going back to Paris to even feel insulted.

He leaves Scott at the counter when he moves to the kitchen to call his cousin. Lydia answers the phone after six rings and for half a second he's worried, she's always got a phone on or near her and it never takes her longer than two rings to answer unless she's literally hanging from a wire. She's breathing heavily when she snaps an, "I'm busy." And when he hears a low sound in the background he smirks as he realises he totally just caught her getting busy.

"You're not with Whittemore, are you?" He teases as he leans the phone between his shoulder and ear so he has two hands free to clean some of the glasses he was technically meant to clean before they opened. "Because you can do better. You have done better," He grins, "Go back to better, Lyds."

"Piss off, cousin." She replies and he can hear shuffling on the other side of the line and a muffled go away for a while as she sends the other breathing-heavily-because-I-just-had-sex occupant out of the room. He hopes it is Whittemore, just because of how little regard his cousin seems to have for whoever else was with her. A moment later and she's back on the line, "What's up?" She probes, "Are you in trouble?"

Stiles opens his mouth to joyfully deprive her of that impression before realising he can't actually, because he kind of is in trouble.

Scott is trouble.

He snaps his mouth closed once more and waits, not for long though, because at his pause she inhales sharply, "Tell me you don't need bail again?" She sounds both scandalised and intrigued and he can't help but scowl because that had been one time.

Though, this shows that she's his favorite cousin for a reason; she's a total raving bitch but she's also the only person he trusts to bail him out if he needs it.

(His dad would be completely unimpressed he'd gotten caught in the first place and so would his Dziadek while any of his other cousins would have a field day and never let him live it down.

Lydia would just sort whatever mess needed sorting.

And mock him for it in private instead of at Family reunions.

His favorite cousin was the sole other only child in this generation of Stilinski's, so they'd gotten attached to one another quite young. They'd been born less than a month apart and had been homeschooled together. They'd also been on a truly ridiculous amount of jobs together and these days, she's like a phantom limb or something when they're apart, "I'm fine, princess." He tells her, cheerfully.

"Uh-huh."

"No, seriously, everybody's fine and out of jail," He pauses, thinking of their twin cousins Ethan and Aiden before correcting himself, "Possibly." He plows on before she can reply, "How's your mom?"

"Getting married."

"What is it this time, lots of money or lots of art?"

"Lots of jewels." She sounds pleased. "Now stop avoiding why you called."

". . . I don't need bail," He says, "But I do need help."

"What do you need?" She asks, efficient as always. He can hear her moving around her room and imagines she's already packing.

"Ugh," He can feel his face redden even as he rolls his eyes, knowing she'll judge him for this; "Scott is in love and wants to steal the Mona Lisa. Somehow those two things ended up synonymous with each other."

"Ugh." She agrees, or maybe that was just aimed at Scott in general, "Have you not yet told him it's already been done?"

"Scott is a puppy and like all puppies, he pees inside when you don't want him to—"

"That image will haunt me forever."

"—the peeing is a metaphor for his inability to lie, Lydia. Because he tells the truth when I don't want him to."

"That was the world's worst metaphor." She informs him, sounding disgusted. "It didn't make sense."

He agrees, "It wasn't my best material."

"Why the Mona Lisa though? La Scapigliata is much prettier." The name rolls of her tongue flawlessly.

He can practically taste the criticism at Scott's taste in her voice, "Seriously? That's what you're getting out of this?" He says, though he can't help but agree.

"Firstly, the Mona Lisa is incredibly pedestrian — and in my opinion, over-glorified — and frankly I had thought better of you." She informs him, "Secondly, Scott's your puppy, not mine and if he wants piss all over your carpet then go and land himself in jail, that's his prerogative."

She sounds so damn hopeful, too.

"I'm going with him."

A heavy silence on the other hand makes him wince and set down the glass he'd almost forgotten was in his hands. He held onto the phone, staring at the door that separated him from Scott, "I know it's stupid—"

"You're right, it's stupid." She interrupts, and he knows it's because rule number two; 'only trust Family'. "And you're not a stupid person, Stiles, no matter how many things you do that point to the contrary; so what exactly are you doing?"

She sounds ridiculously disappointed with him, or rather, she sounds ridiculously pissed off at him but honestly they're kind of both the same thing with her. "How would you feel if I rang you up and said 'oh, excuse me a moment, Stiles, while I pop over to Milan to steal one or two of Leonardo Di Vinci's codices'." She hisses at him. She does that, Lydia. Hisses and growls and always gets her way.

Usually.

"He's my friend, Lyds."

What he doesn't say is this; I can't say no.

On the other side of the line, he hears a loud bang that just might possibly be a shoe she'd thrown at the wall. "I'll be there in two days, you idiot." She growls before hanging up on him mid 'thank you'.

As promised, two days later Lydia arrives almost the same way Scott had; by bursting through the doors of The Beacon calling out for Stiles. Unlike Scott, however, she does it like she's Queen of England and not like she's suddenly thought of an idea so brilliantly stupid he wants to slap her.

"The princess is here." He beams at the strawberry blonde he'd been devoted to since they were both six. "Good flight?"

She strides towards him like she's on a catwalk and not in a dank bar in the middle of Mombasa, a pretty scowl taking over her face, "Shut your stupid face."

She rolls her Gucci suitcase to a stop, dropping her matching carry-on on top of it as he slips from behind the counter to meet her, arms automatically coming up to wrap around her tiny shoulders to squeeze her tightly. She curls her body into his for a brief — if warm — hug and he's struck again by how much he's missed her.

She'd invited him to Rome with her three weeks ago, to help finish up a job, but he'd turned her down in favor of running the pub for his dad for a while.

They hadn't actually been physically apart this long since they were both ten, just after Stiles' mom died and Lydia's dad went missing. Before that, they'd stuck together like the best friends they were but after that they'd kind of gotten freakishly co-dependent.

She steps back from him long enough to kick him in the shin sharply, her Louboutins almost certainly bruising his pale skin. "The flight was fine," She answers finally, "I drank an overpriced and disgusting martini that I already regret. Now tell me about this idiotic idea you have."

He does.

Not an hour later, the 'closed, go away' sign is in the window and Lydia's sitting like the queen she totally is at the bar she'd made him scrub twice before deeming it clean enough to sit at, with a list of names in front of her.

God, he'd even missed her obsessive compulsions.

Twelve of the names in front of her had been crossed off before her plane had even landed, three more between her getting in her hired car and her swanning through the doors of the bar, and the rest had been scribbling out within half an hour by either her or Stiles. Now, it looked like they were just naming anybody who came to mind.

"How about Deucalion? He's a good thief." Scott proposes from his spot at the end of the bar.

He's drinking all of Stiles' beer and making stupid suggestions and Stiles feels only a teensy bit guilty that he really is well and truly over this job before it's had a chance to start. He wonders if it was anybody but an Argent, he'd be more enthusiastic but then he remembers he might end up in jail soon (or at least shot again) and forgets that idea pretty quickly.

Sometimes he forgets Scott's just a small-town kid and really has no idea how to survive in the world but mostly Scott makes it difficult to forget.

"How about you go take a long walk off a short pier?" Lydia suggests blithely as she leans forward to wipe a stray speck of nail polish off her skin.

Stiles thinks that's probably against all sorts of health codes but The Beacon isn't exactly the fanciest of places on their best day and they haven't had a customer in what feels like days so he doesn't say anything. Besides, he muses, it's not like he'll get anything more than a punch in the shoulder for daring to tell his cousin off for anything.

Still, the smell is making him want to throw up.

Stiles grimaces as he watches her cap the bottle before turning to Scott, "He might be a good thief but he's also a totalitarian asshole who'll likely sell us all out at the first chance." He tells the other boy patiently.

Across from him, Lydia begins rolling the bottle of too-expensive nail polish around the counter like a little wheel and he swipes at it half-heartedly, ignoring the cat-like hiss she send his way. "And this is already risky enough."

Scott blinks through his unruly hair at them, "Isn't he your cousin?"

The strawberry blonde rolls her eyes and lets out an annoyed huff of air. She generally has trouble dealing with Scott's mere presence at the best of times, add into the fact that he's the reason Stiles is risking so much? Frankly, Stiles is proud he hasn't had to help hide his best friend's body yet.

"Scott," He interrupts Lydia as soon as she opens her mouth, knowing she'll in all probability say exactly what she's thinking and knowing for a fact it wouldn't be nice, "The Family is primarily a family but Deucalion is the extra twin you keep in the basement and feed fish heads, you feel me?"

"No." Scott says plainly.

Lydia huffs again.

"He means," She says, throwing an irritated look at Stiles for apparently being incapable of speaking what he calls 'Scott speak' and she calls 'idiot speak', "That just because we're related doesn't mean he's part of the actual Family right now." A deaf person could hear the reverence in her voice when she spoke of the Family but he knew Scott wouldn't understand.

He'd never been able to, no matter how much Stiles tried to explain it.

He once been introduced to a priest with less faith in God than Stiles himself had in the Families, but Scott had been raised by a single mother from bum-hick-ville, California who, though loving, worked a lot just trying to make ends meet. According to Scott, they loved each other unconditionally, but Stiles suspected they actually didn't have that much in common besides that love.

Lydia and Stiles had been raised to believe family was the be all end all, that the Family was the one thing you could always count on not matter what, that you would be able to fall back on no matter how far you fell. Stiles knew his children (if he had them, though it didn't look too likely when lately most of his bed partners were turning out to be of the male persuasion) would be raised the same way he and Lydia had been.

He knew that if he was asked, he'd leave anything behind to protect the Family.

Thank god nobody has told him to leave Scott just yet.

Honestly, he understood you just couldn't comprehend that kind of devotion to something as a whole unless you were part of that something and truthfully, no matter how much it pained him, Scott would probably never be a part of that something.

Especially if he was chasing after the granddaughter of the Interpol's best.

"He broke the rules and he's being shunned." Lydia continues, "We'll probably forgive him one day, or at least, Dziadek will, I certainly won't." She sniffs contemptuously

"You can do that?" Scott wonders.

Lydia ignores him in favor of turning back to Stiles, "What about Vernon?"

"The third or the fourth?"

"Fourth."

Stiles shakes his head, "Nope, he and Erica are in Louisiana. They're getting married in like, a week."

Lydia's perfectly sculpted eyebrows arch at the news, surprised not at the announcement of the future marriage, because Erica Reyes and Vernon Boyd IIII have been attached at the hip since they were teens, but rather at the fact that Stiles knew before she did. At her look, he shrugged, "Erica actually emails." He tells her pointedly.

A few years ago, when Stiles was sixteen, he'd created what he fondly calls the 'we're all still alive' tree. Like a phone tree, it was a way for the five Families to remain connected, to each other and their smaller branches. Truthfully, it was basically just regularly updating one another with emails that have been forwarded to probably too many people. It was so ridiculously far from secure, because it was just a bunch of gmail accounts, that it was mainly the younger generations that used it, though Stiles didn't mind. He'd expected it to fizzle out within a month at most, actually.

If anybody managed to hack into his email account before his weekly clean-out, all they'd find were his many, many cousins and friends talking about comic books or movies they'd seen recently.

Funnily enough, they were all fond of movies about robberies.

Lydia waves at hand at him dismissively, "I don't need to email, I actually talk to you almost daily," She does, it's true, he's needy, "And remind me to send them something. Kali?"

Next to her, Scott perks up, "Kali? She's good too."

Stiles' mouth turns down at the sides, "Pregnant."

"Told you she was a slut."

Lydia's not wrong.

They're all still for a while, thinking over their options and the bar has never been creepier. Not for the first time, he hates that his mom had loved this place so much and his dad couldn't bear to sell it. Some people had gravesites they visited to be close to their dead loved ones, Stiles and his dad had a bar none of the locals liked to visit.

On the other side of the countertop, Scott clenches his jaw, "There's plenty of good thieves, aren't there? We'll figure it out." He looks determined.

"The problem is," Stiles says as he finally manages to swipe Lydia's nail polish away from her, "We need better than just 'good' because 'good' will get us caught. We need 'ridiculously fantastic and possibly really flexible'."

At that, Scott's head falls into his folded arms and he may or may not whimper a little.

Lydia looks thoughtful, "Who else in the Family could possibly do this?" She says as she begins unravelling the fishtail braid in her hair so she can run her fingers through the long strands like she only does when she's stressed out. Stiles knows she doesn't just mean who else could steal this, could plan this, because they all probably could, barring the younger kids.

What she means is, who else would be okay with Stiles risking his life for somebody on the wrong side of the Family line. The answer was, honestly, nobody.

Deucalion was an asshole but even though Stiles had said he'd have no problem leaving them behind, not even he would do that to Lydia and Stiles; Scott on the other hand? Scott's nothing to any of them.

It was too dangerous and Stiles refused to risk his best friend.

The closest they would ever get to somebody that fit those requirements wasn't technically part of their family.

Oh well, rule number three; 'whatever it takes'.

The Stilinski's originated from Poland, though within a few generations they'd moved on to what is now Russia, then Lithuania, then wherever it was the wind took them. Stilinski's were, by tradition, a nomadic family.

(His dad met his mom in Greece while she was on holiday from college and he was stealing something from the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.

As far as his dad was concerned, it was love at first sight.

Before she'd died, his mother had told Stiles that as far as she was concerned, his dad had knocked her down a flight of stairs while running from the cops and only once she'd started swearing at him had he taken her to the hospital so her broken arm could be plastered. Do not, she'd told Stiles firmly, do that to the person you're going to marry.)

Because he travelled so much, Stiles' accent was diluted, a muddle of different inflections that changed depending on who he was speaking to or where he was.

Scott was born and bred in America and he sounds it. He quite literally speaks American and the first time he'd left California let alone the country had been less than eight months ago. He hadn't had enough time for his accent to change; it probably wouldn't for years if it did at all.

Lydia was born in Johannesburg, she spends most of her spare time (i.e. any time not spent stealing or shopping because shopping was not a hobby for her, it was a way of life) in France. However, because her 'spare time' was so sporadic, even if she did like to return to the same apartment twenty minutes from the heart of Paris time after time, she probably really only spent a little less than two months in a year there. Because of that, like him and most of the people in their Family, her accent often transformed.

Just talking to them, it was difficult to discern where the Stilinski's had come from or where they had been, a trick helpful at the best of times and downright lifesaving at the worst.

Law enforcement hated them.

In fact, before Scott, the only people Stiles knew and trusted who had an accent that was, if not easily discerned could at least be narrowed down to a country of origin, were the Hale's.

The Hale's were, by tradition, almost the complete opposite of the Stilinski's.

Where the Stilinski's had safe houses in nearly every country. The Hale's were a Family based almost entirely out of Great Britain.

Since the sixteen hundreds, back before it was called the United Kingdom, they'd operated out of their ridiculously huge ancestral home located in a small town in the middle of the Wales and always ended up back there, one way or another. Over time, they fortified their home, made their Family the strongest out of all of them.

Officially (as much as a society of thieves could call something 'official'), their Family had rights over that whole area. One generally needed some form of sanctioned approval to do a job there or most found that if you haven't gotten permission from the head of the Family beforehand, whatever it was that was stolen generally goes missing a few weeks later.

Nobody can figure out how.

Moral? Get the Hale go-ahead or, you know, buy whatever it is.

Stiles remembers growing up hearing stories about the Hale's (home schooling had always been different, for them). The largest of the main Families, who didn't travel around like the Stilinski's or seamlessly blend into the outside world like the Whittemore's but rather, seemed to seclude themselves from almost everybody else and refuse to use outside help.

They had no contacts, no middlemen. They didn't need them. They did everything themselves.

None of that to say they don't move around; if the 'we're all still alive' tree is to be believed, Peter Hale was currently somewhere around LA while his wife and their son were somewhere in Latvia or Antarctica or something.

As far as Stiles knew, Laura Hale and her barely-seventeen year old sister Fantine Hale were in Madrid, though if Laura's emails were trustworthy (which they rarely were), they were on their way to The Beacon any day now for a drink.

There were more, many more Hale's around the world that didn't email Stiles frequently, but in a few weeks he knows they'll all arrive back at their ancestral home with news and gifts and others things that had probably been stolen and Peter and his wife would snap back together again like the rubber bands they were.

Stiles met and fell in love with the Hale's when his dad had taken him along for a heist a week or two after his mom had died and then promptly left him to go get what he now knows was mind-numbly drunk.

They'd been strangely delighted to host a Stilinski for the first time in years and he'd had been excited to learn more about the other Family he'd heard so much about.

It was there he met Derek.

He was fifteen to Stiles' eleven and he had been Stiles' best friend — only friend at the time actually, because he'd never been so far away from his cousins before. A few years ago he'd started getting the feeling that maybe Derek had only tolerated him or something, all those years ago (though the emails he'd gotten from Laura, George and Fantine in reply to his fears had all assured him that wasn't true). Still, nearly nine years later and he's still a little in love with the frowny jerk without knowing if the other man even remembers him.

Either way, since then, Stiles had often wondered if the Hale's had something going there, with having a single base of operations.

Then he remembered that just over a year after he'd left, Kate Argent managed to burn down half their stash of priceless paintings in the middle of the night before disappearing and forgot that idea pretty quickly.

No wonder the Hale's didn't like outsiders.

The whole thing became a cautionary tale for Stiles' younger cousins; rule number four; 'don't be predictable'.

Whether it was half burnt down or not, whether they were from suffering smoke inhalation or not; no matter what, the Hale's eventually, always, always came back home.

It was fact.

Practically a rule of its own for them.

Derek, on the other hand. . . Derek rarely went home anymore.

(Laura answers on the fourth ring and he wonders if it's opposite day because he usually has to leave a message and wait for her to get back to him. "Stiles?" She laughs, "We were just talking about you!"

"Creepy," He tells her, giving a theatrical full-body shiver he knows she can't see but can probably imagine him doing anyway, "Tell me about it later? I need a favor.")

They find him right where Laura said he'd be, with a surfboard in Australia with an ugly stolen Aborigine antique around his neck.

"You stole that?" Stiles asks dubiously as he stares across the small table they're situated at outside one of the many, many touristy fish 'n' chip joints Bondi has to offer. Australia isn't big on the curly fries he fell in love with in California but these taste great anyway; cheap and delicious and Stiles doesn't know why Lydia looks like she wants to throw it all on the ground and maybe stomp on it a little.

Probably because she's a snob.

"And told people about it?" He clarifies, because Laura had actually mentioned it. Like Derek had been proud of it enough to brag.

Stiles had nicked a bunch of those handy miniature bottles of alcohol off the plane and he didn't tell anybody about it.

Derek glares at Stiles as he chews his hamburger and frankly, if Stiles hadn't spent three months sharing a room with him when they were younger, he'd think he was about to be murdered. As it was, Scott looked a little green around the gills from his spot next to the older man. "Scott, Derek, Derek, Scott." He introduces belatedly, using his lemon-covered chip to gesture at each individual he's introducing. "Derek steals ugly native jewellery, Scott falls in love with people he shouldn't."

On the other side of the table, Derek snorts unattractively and Stiles feels those stupidly familiar pterodactyl-sized butterflies flying about in his stomach because no, of course his crush would still be here after all these years.

Jesus Christ.

He feels eleven again, like he'd just discovered his dick was there for more than pissing.

"How have you been, Derek?" He asks when it looks like Derek is steadfastly refusing to say anything about the necklace he's sporting. Next to him, Lydia pulls out her iPhone and pointedly does not listen while with much less tact, Scott looks between the two of them in confusion.

Derek shoves a chip in his mouth, frown deepening and the little wrinkle between his eyebrows growing more prominent as he chews, "Why are you here, Stiles?" He asks instead of answering and god-damn his voice.

Stiles grew up in different countries, he was used to different accents, damn it; so how did Derek's manage to put any other he'd ever heard before to shame?

All these years later and he's still got that accent like all the other Hale's.

"Well, you don't call, you don't write." Stiles jokes half-heartedly.

"We're here because we have a job." Lydia interjects coolly, calmly locking her phone and placing it on the table in front of her. He's kind of thankful his cousin has got this because, Jesus Christ, Derek frigging Hale's face is a thing of beauty and Stiles cannot compute with this shit.

Especially when there's feelings.

Rule number five; 'don't get emotional'.

"And you thought of me." Derek sounds sceptical.

"Yes, Hale. You and your ridiculously photogenic face were the first that popped into my head." Lydia deadpanned. "Of course not. Nobody in our Family would do it without abandoning Stiles' new puppy at the first sign of trouble and I'm not going to ask a Reyes."

The way she says it makes it sound like it's the stupidest idea in the world.

"We've kind of exhausted all our other options, dude."

Watching the older man's face as he picks up what's left of his burger, Lydia casually pushes her own share of the food towards Stiles (and he doesn't even care that she probably only did it because Scott was looking at it mournfully and she was a bitch because hey, free food). "It's dangerous and there's probably no money in it at all because we might end up in jail." Stiles chokes on a chip, "You in, Hale?"

Stiles wheezes out a breath and glares at his cousin before taking a sip from the coke can in front of him. Derek will never say yes, now. Nobody in their right mind would.

On the other side of the table, Derek loudly swallows the last of his burger and Stiles can't help but watch his throat work, not even caring about the Manolo's Lydia is currently jamming in his foot in attempt to get him to snap out of his reverie.

"How dangerous?"

Oh. Well. Derek always was a bit out of his mind.

"Pretty freaking dangerous." Stiles answers, "We're robbing the Louvre."

On the other side of him, Derek raises an eyebrow and leans back in his chair, a look of disbelief on his face, "In this century? You've got to be kidding me." He looks first from Stiles' reddening face to Lydia's annoyed expression. He ends up looking at Scott who looks enthusiastic, "You're not kidding me." He says flatly. He turns to stare accusingly at Stiles and he wants to shrug, say 'what do you expect' but clearly Derek expected Stiles to be smarter than this — honestly, so did Stiles. Scott clearly made him stupid.

"In the interest of all possible future partnerships, I feel this would be a good time to tell you that Lydia doesn't kid." Stiles tells him.

Scott nods, "She kind of doesn't."

"And while I do, you know, 'kidder' that I am and all; this time I'm not."

"Jesus." Derek mutters, hand rubbing at his face. "Do you even know the last time somebody succeeded in robbing from the Louvre?" He demands.

Lydia rolls her eyes, "Probably better than you do, actually. However, Stiles is right and his point stands; I don't joke. Especially about how idiotic McCall is."

"Hey!"

His cousin holds a hand in front of his friends face in the universal sign of 'talk to the hand', "You shut up." She commands before sniffing disdainfully, "You fell in love with an Argent, so you've lost any right to speak."

Stiles snorts and Lydia turns to Derek, "In the interest of all possible future partnerships," She looks meaningfully at Stiles, "I feel you need to be aware that this idiot has decided robbing a national museum to steal the Mona Lisa is a good idea." She informs him matter-of-factly.

(She waves a dismissive hand at Derek's look, "— don't worry, we disabused him of that notion quickly—")

"And if wanting to steal the Mona Lisa of all things wasn't bad enough, for god's sake," She tells the Hale, "He wants to do it not because he finds it beautiful or even to sell it," She sounds completely scandalised at the thought and he agrees because you don't just sell the Mona Lisa, "But because he wants to use it as a distraction so he can spend time with a girl whose family would very much like to lock up his best friend."

By the end of her rant she's almost spitting and Stiles moves his hand to cover her own. She snatches her hand away with a hissed piss off, moving to flip her hair over her shoulder and rifle through her oversized tote to find a mirror and some lipstick. Inwardly, Stiles groans because he'd hoped the two planes they'd had to catch to get here would have given her enough time to calm down a little bit.

Clearly not.

Derek turns to glower at Scott, "What are you, new?"

The Families were ridiculously old, they'd been around for years and years and eventually met one another and formed bonds, became interrelated. As secular as the Hale's were, even they trusted the other Families to some degree. These days, even though the Reyes' were few and far between and the Whittemore's were getting more and more legit as the years went by, they all remained in one way or another.

It was in the sixties that the Argent's popped up and sadly, they remain too.

The Hale fire happened when Stiles was twelve and in Sri Lanka and Derek was sixteen and home in England. It's not something the Hale's advertised, other than the basics, the bare minimum to let others know what had happened but from what he's been able to gather, Kate Argent wasn't going by 'Kate Argent' back then, but by Katie Aaron, and Derek was stupidly in love with her.

He only knows that much because back then, Derek and he used to talk a lot.

Stiles always got the feeling Derek had felt a bit smothered by his close-knit Family and when Stiles left to go back to his dad, they'd texted, emailed, sent packages to one another that took weeks to reach their respective PO boxes. In some of the last texts, he'd mentioned her, the beautiful woman who laughed at his jokes and played with his hair.

Stiles had been ridiculously jealous at the time and in an effort to hide that, he'd told Derek to go for it.

He regrets that so much now.

From the texts and emails, Stiles knows she was eight years older than Derek and he didn't tell his parents about her for a long time, didn't even tell Laura. Stiles had been the only other person who knew.

Apparently when he did tell his mom, she'd flipped and it was only because Derek threatened to leave for good that they made him invite her over for dinner. They'd been reluctantly charmed like Derek was and though rules were laid down, they'd told the two they could continue dating. The older man had been so excited he'd actually called Stiles to tell him the news.

Derek invited her to dinner just once, and the next night their house was on fire. Billions of pounds worth of jewellery, paintings, sketches, manuscripts and first editions were lost in the fire. Derek's uncle Peter got horrible burns on his right arm trying to save his favorite book. Nobody died, nobody went to jail.

That's all the Hale's told the Stilinski's.

After that, Derek stopped writing back to Stiles.

Kate Argent was a story told to the smaller kids, Derek's cousin Isaac, who hadn't been born at the time, once told him how terrified he was of the Argents, of being trapped in a small space and being burnt alive. Stiles himself was too old for the story to be used as a deterrent and too old for the anger and hatred to roll right off him like it did the younger kids. Since then he'd made it a point to stay far away from the law enforcing family.

Stiles hated the Argents, all the Families did.

What he knows is that since that night, the Argent family were officially the enemy of the Families and if Scott ends up with Allison? Stiles can't be friends with him anymore.

That's just the way it is.

They spend the next three nights at Derek's penthouse apartment planning.

Less than five minutes from the beach they met him on, the place is larger than what he'd pictured Derek would like. The décor actually reminds Stiles of Lydia's apartment in France, if only just a bit more modern.

They both favor wide, open spaces and white walls. Unlike Lydia's vintage apartment with their filigreed cream colored walls and old-fashioned chandeliers however, Derek's place is brick walls painted over a stark, bright white and Stiles had commented on how very un-Derek like it all was. "Laura picked it out." He explained awkwardly, much to Stiles' amusement.

"That's so cute." Stiles grins.

"Yeah," Lydia says, looking disinterested. "That's adorable, Hale."

There are only two bedrooms so Stiles and Scott end up on the couch and living room floor respectively because well, its Derek's house and Lydia's scary as fuck when she hasn't gotten a proper night's sleep.

Right now, they're sitting in the kitchen because Derek has an island and stools that are ridiculously comfortable and Stiles loves islands and Scott had gotten used to stools after spending all his time sitting at the bar top of The Beacon, "We don't actually need to steal anything," Lydia clarifies, as if that idea hadn't already entered Stiles' mind.

Spread out across the island, held down by cereal boxes and glasses of juice, are the blueprints Scott brought with him all the way from The Beacon.

He'd wanted to fold them up when they boarded the plane to Sydney, like one would a map, so nobody would be able to tell what they were; Lydia had quickly disabused him of that notion, snatching them away and rolling them up carefully, something Stiles was thankful for. Blueprints were too hard to read once they'd been folded or scrunched up, everybody knew that. Hell, they were hard to read before folding them up.

"McCall just wants a distraction, right? So we should just make the place go into lockdown; knock a painting off the wall and stand back to watch the pandemonium." She pops her spoonful of yogurt into her mouth.

Across from her, eating a ridiculously large bowl of sugary cereal he'd had to actually go out and buy because Derek didn't believe in sugar or something, the asshole, Scott looks balefully at her Greek yogurt and Stiles can't help but agree; Derek and Lydia and their weird healthy eating bond was getting more and more horrifying each day.

They needed to separate those two as soon as possible because clearly, that burger on the beach had been a product of his imagination.

Stiles hums, "We could." He agrees as he spoons his own fruit loops into his mouth and speaking through the soggy, sugary goodness, "But there's another option, and hey, just throwing around ideas here; but what if we could get away with it all? Actually steal from the Louvre, Lyds."

He looks from his cousin to his crush, swallowing, "None of them know what we look like, Allison didn't even see me." He points out and honestly, a part of him is still unsure whether Allison even exists and Scott's just not wanting to go to the nuthouse alone. "We could be the first in this g—"

"— Family!" Lydia snaps over him, glaring at Scott because well, it's Lydia. "We could be the first in this Family to steal from the Louvre and Stiles, if you think anybody would be happy about that? You've lost your god-damn mind. Think of your dad."

(What he was going to say was this generation, not this Family, because there were ridiculous amount of fake artworks all over the world that nobody knew about that were proof his family, and other Families had no problem stealing from 'unstealable' places.

This generation consisted of only seven Stilinski's — three of whom were still technically not of legal age and so always had one of the older Family members with them at all times — and none of them have stolen anything from the Louvre yet; something Stiles honestly believes to be a disappointment and Lydia believes to be a good idea if one wanted to avoid a jail sentence.

He knows she's really only so firmly against this because she has a five year plan to steal one thing from each of the top ten museums and galleries of the world and that they were fucking with that plan. It was pissing her off to no end

Besides, shut up, Lydia; his dad would probably love the whole thing and his Babcia definitely would.)

From his spot by the stove, Derek smirks lightly.

Unlike the others, he's not eating and is instead just standing there with folded arms and a mildly entertained look on his face, like watching them try and plan a heist was the funniest thing he's ever seen.

"How is your dad?" He asks Stiles instead of commenting on him almost spilling the beans on both their families.

"Uh, good?" Stiles replies, honestly a little confused at the random change in conversation.

"He's good." He says again, a little more confidently. "He's in Barcelona right now, doing a job." He matches Derek's smirk, "How's yours?"

Low blow, he thinks as soon as it comes out. Then, good, because he's not sorry. It's not his fault Derek hasn't really kept in contact with any of them outside of holidays for years. From the faintly amused look in Derek's eye, he seems to know exactly what Stiles is thinking and for a split second he's pissed.

He'd wanted a little more acknowledgment of Derek's assholeness than just a look.

Derek adjusts his weight so he's tilted more towards Stiles than the stove, eyeing the younger man from his spot away from the rest of them. "He's good, thanks. He and mom are thinking of having a bit of a holiday, leave the place for granddad to look after for a while."

Stiles grins at the thought, anger forgotten, "How'd your granddad take that?"

"Hasn't let go of his Winchester since."

Lydia glares at them both, "Can we table the flirty-catch up for now? I'm trying to sort out your shit, Stiles."

Stiles looks at her sheepishly, putting his bowl down with a clunk. "Sorry."

He leans forward in his chair to point to a short line on the blueprints, trailing one long finger across one of the thicker lines, "How about here? Instead of taking the go-in-after-close route, we go in the middle of the rush."

He looks at his cousin, "Then, we just need pull the fire alarm or something and stash the paintings in a less secure place until we can get back to them? Leave with the tourists."

Lydia takes a second to look at where he's pointing, a large round room with a set of several smaller paintings that'll sell for a good price if they ring Danny in Hawaii to hook them up with a buyer or two. That way, it'll stay out of the Family's awareness.

His cousin's mouth, the one almost identical to his own, twists in displeasure. "That'd be a good idea," She reflects, "If they didn't literally cage the rooms in as soon as any alarm goes off and then suck all the oxygen out of the room. We'll be knocked out long enough for Interpol to put a pair of pretty handcuffs on those wrists of yours and honey; you don't want to know what depriving the brain of oxygen actually does."

Stiles actually already knows what depriving the brain of oxygen does, thanks to years of ADD (or is it ADHD now?) and access to Wikipedia. Stiles can tell you all sorts of shit that could happen if you had no oxygen to breathe.

He widens his eyes and whistles in appreciation, "God-damn it, France; this is why we can't have nice things."

They're all silent for a moment before Stiles breathes out, "Okay!" He claps his hands together, before he looks over at a sulking Scott, "Any chance Allison has a Facebook, dude? That'd be an easier way to get her attention."

Scott frowns, "You made me delete my Facebook, remember? Said it'd leave a trail that's too easy to follow."

Yeah, he does remember that, actually. Scott's mom had freaked.

Behind him, Derek snorts and Scott turns his glare onto the older man, "Shut up!" He turns back to Stiles, "Can he even help?" He whines plaintively. "He hasn't done anything but laugh at all our plans since we got here."

"Seriously?" Derek mutters, eyebrows lowering and a hand coming up to rub at his eyes. Stiles has to force his face to stay impassive so he doesn't burst out an 'awww' at how much like the Grumpy Cat he looks right now. He turns away from Stiles so he can look Scott in the eye, "You guys can leave, if you like." He shrugs, "I don't need to rob the Louvre to impress girls."

"No!" Stiles bursts out before he can stop himself. "We're not leaving." He snaps at Derek because Jesus Christ, he did not need to know Derek got with girls ever, before he turns to Scott too, "Scott, you need to shut up."

Scott opens his mouth and like Lydia did a few moments before, Stiles holds his hand up to stop the other boy before he can speak. "No, seriously shut up and listen. We need Derek. Anybody else we could call would have no problem leaving you to die in an airless room or be arrested by the police and trust me," He stresses, "Interpol aren't your friends, Scott."

Out of the corner of his eye he can see Lydia looking completely fascinated by this turn of events as she absentmindedly spoons more yogurt into her mouth. She's never seen him snap at Scott, none of the Family has. As far as they all knew, Scott had Stiles wrapped around his finger.

Stiles knew what they thought, that he'd seen a dopey looking kid with too little money and no direction and taken him under his wing. He knew they thought he believed Scott could do no wrong, that he was naïve and it was Stiles' job to protect him.

It's why most of them didn't like the American.

However he also knew they didn't have the whole story.

There were some stories thieves just didn't tell — trade secrets, incriminating secrets, typically — things that they keep silent for their own protection or the protection of others.

This was one of his.

Stiles met Scott in California, that much was true. However they hadn't met because Scott pickpocketed Stiles on the subway like he'd told everybody because for one, the town they were in was so small it didn't even have a subway, and moreover Stiles was there to case a private collection of Greek vases, not bring home a stray.

Stiles had no interest in strays.

Stiles still has no interest in strays, even though he's got one he kind of reluctantly loves.

He was doing the job with a friend of a friend (a friend of Jackson Whittemore, he'd like to point out) and it'd turned bad; the guy had actually dropped one of the vases they'd been stealing and the whole place was alarmed and if it wasn't for Scott he'd probably be dead.

Apparently, along with priceless artifacts, the owner had a collection of honest-to-god Scooby Doo type goons willing to quite literally chase Stiles out of town or kill him trying.

His partner had disappeared and that small-ass town was apparently bigger when you were lost and/or running for your life; Stiles had been both.

He'd been running for about twenty minutes before Scott saw him; the then-stranger letting Stiles into the store he'd been about to close. "Hey, how's it going?" He croaked out, grinning crookedly at the shocked boy. He was hunched over, hands on his knees as he struggled to keep upright, watching as the other boy locked the door behind him. He was fit, you had to be if you were a thief, rule number six; 'be ready for anything', but he'd always been more of a sprinter than a track star, short distances and gymnastics, that's what he was good at.

Not to mention the bullet wound he was currently trying to keep pressure on was being a bit of a Debby Downer.

"Do you have a belt?" He asked.

"A what?"

"A belt!" Stiles repeated, "You know, to hold your pants up?"

"No, these fit fine — why would I need? — Shit." The other boy swore when he realised Stiles was bleeding, "Oh shit. Do you need to go to the hospital, dude? I think you need to go to the hospital."

Stiles had barked out a laugh, because, "Probably."

Instead, he'd salvaged a needle and some plain black thread he'd found in Scott's mother's sewing kit, Scott watching with wide eyes and a pale face. "Are you seriously going to—?"

"Pfft, no. That'd be stupid." He said, and in the absence of a belt to use as a tourniquet he kept one hand pressed against the bleeding wound, while using the other to thread the string through the needle he held in his mouth. "How about a lighter? Have you got a lighter?"

"What? No."

Taking a deep breath to steady his unsteady hands, and then another when the first didn't work, "Okay then. No lighter." On the one hand, if he couldn't sterilise the needle, it was a very good possibility he'd just bring on an infection by doing this but on the other hand if he didn't close the wound he'd probably bleed to death.

Nether option really appealed to him.

He had no other options though, he couldn't risk going to an actual hospital so close to his mark. "I'm gonna die." He whimpered.

"What?!" Scott screeched. "You can't die here!"

"You didn't have to let me in!" Stiles snapped back.

The other boy looked perturbed, "I didn't do it so you could die in my mom's shop."

"I can do this." Stiles mumbled to himself through the impromptu suture kit in his mouth, tuning the other boy's words out. "It'll be fine."

Seconds later, he digs his fingers into the hole in his thigh. "Oh god." He sobbed out.

It hurt.

Like a lot.

"Jesus Christ." His savior yelped before running into the back room.

As the sounds of dry retching reached him, Stiles huffed out a wobbly laugh, "No, it's okay dude." He muttered to himself around the needle clenched between his teeth, reaching the bullet what feels like a lifetime later. "I— shit, I don't need any help." He pulled the bullet out slowly and carefully, fearful it'd slip through his fingers and he'd have to go digging through muscle and blood once more.

"Just dying here." He continued bleakly, looking around at just exactly where he was. "In your mom's shop." He paused, "Tea shop?"

Oh god, it was priceless; there was seriously a sign on the wall across from him telling him to 'Have A Tea-Rific Day!' (and in a few days, once he'd woken from his fever induced hallucinations, he'd remember it and laugh).

Almost done, he thinks. He dropped the bullet onto the counter of the shop and wiped his bloody hands off on his sweatshirt. Just a little bit longer and you'll be just fine, he silently promises himself. With shaky hands he slid the needle from his mouth and wiped his spit off it. After a mental count to three, he pierced his skin.

When he was done, the tanned boy returned with a growled, "What the hell is going on?" He stopped a few feet from Stiles, "Are you running from the cops or something?"

Stiles grinned manically, showing all his teeth. His heart was pumping with adrenaline that he knew wasn't going to last much longer. Soon, he was going to crash. Badly. He figured soon he'd need some sort of alcohol to splash onto the wound since without at least a lighter to disinfect the needle, the odds he'd make it to a safe house weren't good. Add in the fact there might have been something already in the gunshot wound before he'd closed it up and it lessened his chances of reaching somebody he trusted to put actual stitches in even more.

God, he was so going to die.

"Or something." He muttered.

Looking around him, he realised that the tea shop they were in was clean, sure, but that was about all there was good to say about it. The curtains on the window was threadbare and looked like they'd been patched up more than once and the furniture was mismatched, placed haphazardly around the store. "So, tell me; do you wanna make a quick buck?"

His mind was already flashing to getting a car, getting out of dodge. This job was a bust and he needed to get to a phone to call his dad or, and he shuddered, Lydia. He wondered if the other boy had a car and how much he'd ask for it, exactly.

As it turns out, while Scott did have a car, his mom's, but he didn't want money. Rather, he wanted an escape from bum-hick-ville which Stiles personally understood because Jesus Christ this place was awful. Stiles himself just wanted to not be in his debt and somehow those two things ended up being tantamount to them becoming best friends.

(The fact that Scott had literally smuggled a practically unconscious Stiles out of town and nursed him through a fever for four days helped too.)

In the end, they actually do go with Stiles' plan.

He, Lydia and Derek tear it to shreds first, of course, because a simple plan wouldn't be good enough, no matter how much Scott stressed that simple was better, wasn't it?

Because no, Scott. No. It really wasn't.

Not in this job, at least.

They stick with the fire-alarm pull, ("Because what do all great museums fear more than theft?" Derek asks, "Fire.") but they pick a different room and decide on just the one painting to take instead of the set he'd suggested. This way, Derek said, they could find a buyer themselves without needing to bring in a middleman they didn't know or trust.

Stiles' stomach jumped when he realised Derek had, in a seriously roundabout way, just told Stiles he trusted him.

"We need gas masks." Lydia says as she stares down at another list she's started putting together. Derek pulls the list towards him; ignoring the murderous look she throws him in favor of also stealing her pen.

("It's my pen and my piece of paper, Stilinski." He tells her, blatantly calling her by her family name instead of the name on her passport. Stiles approves because 'Lydia Martin', really?

"Go fuck yourself." She replies pleasantly.)

"We need oxygen masks and air tanks." Derek corrects her, "And we need a way to meld those two things together so they actually work. But we need more than that, we need a way to get that painting out. Your idea would be good," He tells Stiles, but before he can get his hopes up for an actual compliment, Derek continues, "If it was a smaller museum. The Louvre would up their security within hours and we'd have to start all over again. We wouldn't get a chance to do it again; we only have one shot."

Lydia nods in agreement and Stiles flips her the bird, because traitor.

"Now, you all look young enough to pose as student artists—"

"Oh, fuck you." Stiles retorts, already annoyed Derek was in the middle of ripping his idea apart and not feeling like being insulted on top of that.

"—So we need to figure out which schools are taking field trips on what days, get some fitted uniforms." Derek continues, the miniscule lifting of the corner of his mouth the only indication he'd even heard Stiles.

Lydia looks mildly impressed, "That's actually a good idea, Hale." She snatches the list back, pulling out another pen from the pile Stiles had accumulated for her, "We take in a couple of blank canvases," Under 'oxygen masks and air tanks' she writes 'blank canvases' in her loopy cursive, "Room deprives itself of oxygen, we pop the oxygen masks on and then swap one of the blank canvases for the painting."

Scott turns to Derek, an elated look taking over his face, "That's brilliant, we could leave straight though the front door."

"Wait." Stiles says, "Wasn't that in a movie?"

Derek's mouth quirks, "I got the idea from a book, actually."

"Stop your mouth from moving." Lydia orders him, looking pained that the idea she'd been reluctantly impressed by was taken from a book.

"Was it at least a good book?" Stiles asks.

"Stiles!" Lydia snaps, lobbing her pen at his face.

"Shit, I was just asking!" He whined. He scowls at his cousin, absentmindedly rubbing at the mark she and her-flinging skills pen had left on his face, "Well, how long does it take for the oxygen to leave the room?"

"Seconds," Lydia tells him dispassionately, "And like I said, the rooms close themselves off." She grimaces, "There's no feasible way we can stay in the room until then and just put the masks on. We're going to have to hide but there's nowhere to hide."

"Wait." Stiles pulls out a different set of blueprints, "What about the vents?"

He drags his finger across the mesh of crisscrossing lines and numbers; "Two of us go in through the front door while two of us go in through the vents." He looks up at her, "You and Scott pull the fire alarm, dump your canvas covers because you'll clearly be too panicked to hold onto your things," He waggles his eyebrows, "You poor distressed art students, you. Then, you just leave with the rest of them while Derek and I put the masks on while we're still in the vents, slide in, replace one of the blank canvases with the painting and meet up with you."

"How big are the vents?" Scott asks.

Stiles checks the blueprints, "It'll be a squeeze but it'll work."

"Will you be able to fit the air tanks in there with you?"

"If we go single-file and aren't seriously claustrophobic? Maybe."

"That's good." Derek tells Stiles, looking vaguely impressed.

"Kind of Mission Impossible." Scott agrees.

Stiles smirks smugly back at them, reaching forward to casually take a sip of his coffee, wrinkling his nose in disgust when he realises its gone cold.

"Wait, why am I with McCall?" Lydia hisses.

Stiles shrugs, putting the coffee cup back down and looking mournfully at the empty machine behind Derek, "Because he needs to leave to see Allison and you'll be fine on your own after that." He says simply.

Lydia looks mollified, "Alright."

"What else?"

"Well, how far away are the Argents from the museum? Does McCall have a way of getting to his beloved?" Lydia questions scornfully.

"They're not far." Derek tells her, "And with any luck, Allison is at home. I know Chris Argent works for Interpol and as far as I know, Victoria still works in the Police Nationale, so they should be gone most of the day."

Scott blinks in confusion, "How do you know so much about them?"

Derek glowers, "They're Argents." He says simply, as if that's enough.

Which, you know, it kind of is.

"So," Stiles says, sending a warning look Scott's way, "A car will work?"

Lydia nods in the affirmative, "Give me a pen."

"Get your own pen."

Lydia glares until he concedes; skilfully catching the pen he throws at her in retribution and adding 'car, manual/auto?' to the list, "You can drive, right McCall?"

Next to her, Scott rolls his eyes, "Yes, Lydia, I can drive."

"Good." She says, like if the answer had been different there would've been trouble and really she was doing them all a favor so would they just continue doing what she says? Idiots.

Stiles kind of loves the way she could infuse entire paragraphs into a single word.

Stiles tilts his stool back so they're leaning on the back two legs, carefully balancing as he looks at his cousin, "Anything else?"

Lydia looks down at the list, eyes swooping over the items she's crossed out or ticked, circled or underlined. He knows her mind is buzzing, sifting through back up plans and alternate routes. If anybody could see a flaw in her plan, it'll be Lydia.

"No." She replies reluctantly. "I think as far as a basic plan goes, this'll work. We'll need more time to case the museum, of course, not just the room we need but the entire wing. We also need to find out the camera placement of the place and when the guards are in what rooms and such."

She looks up at Stiles, "And I need you to be aware I fully expect you to abandon the painting and get yourself to a safe house if things go bad. McCall's love life is not worth spending the rest of your lives with a cellmate named Big Jim."

Derek raises an eyebrow at her "Big Jim?"

"Don't drop the soap, Derek."

Derek's mouth quirked, "Alright. Your Family's or mine?"

"Ours, of course." She tells him, the duh apparent in her tone of voice.

Derek smirks, "Of course."

Rule number seven; 'go where you know'.

Paris, as a general rule, is a beautiful place. It'd have to be, to be able to attract so much attention.

Honestly, Stiles can completely understand the hype.

He likes the museums and the libraries, the hustle and bustle of people running every which way. He likes the bread and the tobacco and how good the wifi can be. Still, unlike Lydia, Paris has never been his favourite place; it's not even in his top ten because he doesn't really like shopping and he doesn't like how Parisians tend to look down on the tourists or how the tourists gape and coo over every little thing, like holy shit, it's the Eiffel Tower how about we stand in line for seven hours just to climb it.

Not his cup of tea.

He much prefers places with locals who scream obscenities out their windows or gamble in the streets; he prefers heat and spice.

They stay in Lydia's apartment; a spacious three bedroom thing that looks like it's from a different time with its chandeliers in every room (even the bathroom, Lydia?) and vintage furniture. And if that wasn't enough to impress, there was also a roof terrace, an old metal balcony that was perfect for watching the sunrise and if Lydia wasn't just lying to keep Stiles entertained; a stray cat that liked to hang around and wait for his cousin to take pity on it long enough to feed it.

Normally, he'd take a second to look around, maybe try and find this cat she's told him so much about but right now the magic of Paris is literally the only thing keeping him standing.

"Sleeeeeep." He groans, dragging his duffle along the floor behind him as Lydia lets them all into the apartment.

(There are three different locks on the front door with a different key for each, all from different key rings. Let nobody say Lydia Stilinski is not a completely paranoid drama queen.

"It's not paranoia if they really do want to put you in jail." She tells him.)

With an eye roll, Lydia shows them where they'll all be sleeping (Stiles and Derek in the two spare bedrooms, Scott on the pull-out sofa) and informs them she's off to bed, to hell with the fact it's barely five at night, she needs to acclimatise.

"Don't drool on my upholstery." She instructs Scott before flouncing to her bedroom. Stiles manages to mumble a goodnight to the other two, he goes to his own room and promptly falls face-first onto the bed.

He's woken hours later by Lydia crawling under the covers and tangling her feet with his. He wordlessly pulls her tiny body closer towards him but doesn't move from his face-down position because he's comfortable god-damn it. "How's your dad?" She mocks, "How's your dad? Is he serious?" She pinches him lightly, "Are you serious?"

She sounds way too awake. "What?" He defends himself sleepily, "It's a legitimate question."

"But you know how his dad is. You speak to his dad." Great, she sounds like she's judging him more than usual. "And his sisters and his uncles and everybody else in his Family." She says matter-of-factly. "You practically sideline stalk him through them. At least he doesn't already know the answer to his questions."

"It's not my fault he doesn't know the answer," He frowns, "He could call me. You know, that's an option."

"Don't be petty."

Stiles pauses before letting about a huff of air, "Ugh," He groans, "You're right." He pulls a pillow over his head before burrowing into the dent in the mattress his head had made overnight. "None for me."

There's a pause, "Was that a Mean Girls reference?" She asks sceptically.

"It felt appropriate."

"Mean Girls references are only appropriate before you hit the big two-oh." She informs him judgingly, "Or if you run a blog."

He grins drowsily into the pillow his face is trying to fuse itself to, "Good thing I run a blog, then."

"You're still over twenty."

"Younger than you." He retorts.

"Only by thirteen days." She protests.

When they'd been younger, she'd loved being older, had lorded it over him for years. It wasn't until she realised reaching thirty first wasn't something to brag about. Thank god she still had a good few years to go, because he was not looking forward to that birthday.

He chuckles sleepily, "Still counts. You're so old, Lyds."

Beside him, she huffs in either aggravation or fondness but he's too busy falling asleep to care to figure out which one it was.

Probably the first one, though.

You know, knowing her.

Over the next week and a half, while they wait for Derek to get them their oxygen masks and air tanks (apparently he's using one of his mom's sources because just buying them from a scuba shop or stealing them from a hospital would be asking too much) and Lydia to design and develop four brand-new communication devices that meet all their requirements, from his habit of walking around without a shirt, Stiles discovers that besides the smaller scars that litter his body, Derek's two biggest defining marks are the large triskele tattoo between his shoulder blades and a burn scar across his shoulder.

He knows that the tattoo is the Hale Family's calling card (different from their Family crest because this was something they left at the scene of the crime and not something they signed their letters with) and that there are at least three CEO's who currently have private detectives trying to find the person who left behind the triskele calling card. He also knows they'll never find them.

The burn mark though, that's new.

It mostly covers his left shoulder and pectoral, but some of it trails off towards his back. Thankfully, it looks like it completely missed his tattoo ('thankfully' because Jesus that tattoo on that back is a favor to the world).

He doesn't think it happened in the fire which means it's happened in the past few years or so, and Stiles can't help but stare at it each time Derek walks past. It's got to have been at least second degree, and was probably painful as all hell, but Derek doesn't look too bothered by it. Stiles wonders if there's any lingering pain like with Peter's arm and he just doesn't like people knowing about it, but he's too afraid to ask.

It feels too personal, somehow and no matter what Lydia says, he does have some tact.

Stiles' own scars are an assortment of gunshot wounds, taser burns and even the odd dog bite wound (ever been bitten by a dog? It's not fun). He also has a four inch scar on his stomach that he likes to tell people he got because he got into a knife fight in Russia while in reality he'd just fallen out of a tree while he'd been casing a job.

He'd gone on his first heist when he was eight and between then and now he'd earned a reputation for always managing to slip out of seemingly impossible situations by the skin of his teeth, something that was joked about by his older family members but also praised quite often by them too — one of the reasons he's fully aware he's one of the best (at least in this generation because there's his dad to consider) and will only get better the more he works.

The added reputation of being reckless(sly stupid) was something he was only a teensy bit less proud of. Because, come on. Since when is being willing to do almost anything to get the job done a bad thing?

His Babcia sometimes likes to call him her little cat, with his seemingly endless supply of lives. Lydia on the other hand, liked to call him an idiot.

"Put it in McCall."

"I don't want to."

"What are you, five? Don't be a baby." Lydia snaps. "This time, there'll be no nasty shocks."

"I don't believe you." Scott tells her plaintively and across from them where he's busy practising putting on the oxygen masks and setting up the air tanks Derek had whipped out earlier today, Stiles can't help but think maybe there's hope for his best friend yet.

"I promise." She says sweetly, clearly deciding a change in tactics is needed.

They're sitting in the sitting room, using Lydia's antique coffee table as their base of operations for today. She's pulled out sketchbooks and even a transparent clear whiteboard she wouldn't let any of the rest of them touch. She'd been outlining mathematical problem he only understand the basis of as she works on their comms; she says she won't trust anything else, they don't need time relay problems.

Derek had agreed wholeheartedly.

Stiles did too, of course, but he'd been more worried about how the two people he was half in love with (one platonically, the other not even a little bit platonically) had banded together.

Scott looks over at Stiles helplessly, "Stiles?"

"Stiles." Lydia says sternly.

"Do it dude." He tells his best friend because better Scott than him. "Like a bandaid."

"She's been electrocuting my ear." Scott shrieks.

"She's been shocking your ear," Derek corrects as he nudges Stiles into action. He realises belatedly that he'd stopped attaching and reattaching the tube of the oxygen mask to the air tank and frowns when he realises he's forgotten what step he was up to and needs to start all over again. They're trying to get to less than seven seconds. "Have you ever actually been electrocuted?"

"Of course he hasn't." Lydia laughs mockingly, like, being electrocuted was a rite of passage or something. Stiles doesn't even know how her brain works anymore. Then again, almost everybody he knows has had some sort of electrical burn so she may be onto something.

"I could've been electrocuted!" Scott defends himself, "I've been places. I've done things! Tell them, Stiles!"

"He's fallen off a roof?" Stiles offers.

Lydia cackles and Scott blushes, "Jeez, fine!" He snatches the earpiece from her hands and carefully manoeuvres it into his ear, freezing as soon as it's in place. "Okay. I think—"

Without preamble, Lydia turns one of the other earpieces on, ignoring Scott when he flinches.

They're all are quiet for a moment as they watch Scott carefully; "I think I can hear something?" Scott volunteers grudgingly. "But if this has gone wrong, I might be dead, so don't take my word for it."

"Why am I in your afterlife?" Lydia glares.

"I stole my neighbor's puppy when I was a kid." Scott tells her. "My grandma was right and I've gone to hell."

Stiles is confused. "I'm confused." He says.

"Red wire to blue wire." Scott pipes up helpfully.

Or rather, Scott gets the whole thing completely wrong and get's them all thrown in prison because red-to-blue stopped working in the nineties.

Actually, Stiles thinks, maybe Scott has been electrocuted.

Because red-to-blue gets you electrocuted.

"Thanks bro," Stiles says because Scott is trying, "But I meant I don't understand why you're making me do this when we both know you can turn the cameras off remotely."

"When was the last time you did it?" Lydia asks instead of answering.

He actually has to think about that, "Uh, a while ago? Everything's automated now so I kind of just hack in if I need to. Seriously, there's an app for everything."

Lydia stares at him. "I'm telling your dad."

"No!'' He yelps, hands rushing to connect two wires.

"Not those ones!" Derek snaps, but it's too late.

A while later, after thanking Derek for wrapping his hands in gauze and burn cream, Stiles goes off to find his cousin. He finds her on her bed, using her finger to scoop Vegemite out of the jar while America's Next Top Model played on her laptop.

"I'm in a lot of pain because of you." He says as he moves to sit next to her, opening his mouth for a scoop.

"Which is the only reason I'm doing this." She assures him as she uses her finger to scoop out some of the tangy concoction and pop it straight into his mouth.

"That would have been dirty if we weren't related." He cheerfully informs her when his mouth is clear and she's finished wiping off her finger on his shirt. "That is disgusting by the way, I don't know why I wanted some."

"You've always wanted what I have."

"Have not."

"You used to steal my Barbies."

"That could have been my budding sexuality showing."

The look she gives him is answer enough. He barks out a laugh as he tries to use his own finger to steal some more of the Vegemite. It seriously is disgusting. It's also awesome.

Vegemite is confusing.

"Derek got you hooked?" He grins, ignoring the filthy look she throws him when she has to slap away his bandaged hand.

"I don't even know what my life was like before." She admits.

He watches her move to pause the show, an odd thought coming to him; "Where'd you even find it? We're in France." He didn't think the French knew what Vegemite was.

"Well done, Stiles. You've mastered geography." She snipes, flipping her braid over her shoulder, "And I have my ways."

"Have I told you lately that you're terrifying?"

"This morning." She replies with a proud smile.

"How about 'thank you'?" He asks her. "Because I am thankful, you know. You didn't have to come and help me."

She goes quiet for a second, "You're an idiot, Stilinski."

"I love you too, Stilinski." He knocks his shoulder into hers.

Her mouth twists as she shuffles closer to him, "Shut up. Tyra's about to yell at Tiffany." She leans her head on his shoulder as she presses play.

While Tyra is mid-rant she silently scoops him out some more of the Vegemite and he smiles because, hey, they're okay.

Stiles knows that because of his red-to-blue accident, they're behind schedule by a few days, though Derek tells him not to worry. Because of the delay, however, he still hasn't mastered connecting his regulator to his air tank and then putting his regulator on in under seven seconds, let alone figured out a way to get those things into the air vents of the Louvre.

Because of his hands, he's basically out of commission (at least the physical-labour part of it) for a while so Lydia's taken to popping up out of nowhere to quiz him on everything; usually while he's trying to watch French daytime television (there's a lot of sex) or figure out a way to make himself something to eat with his hands still wrapped.

Thank god he has a very talented mouth or he'd probably starve.

He now know the blueprints for the entire ventilation system and the east wing completely off by heart and knows what turns need to be made and when without having seen them. As long as nothing has been changed in the past six months, he's set.

Right now, said hands are resting on his knees as Stiles watches carefully as Lydia flashes photo after photo at him.

"Roberto, twelve to six."

"Good."

"Jacques, four to eleven."

"Good."

"Claudia, two to two."

"Good."

". . . "

"Well?"

"I'll get it." He tells her.

"Of course you will."

"Wait." He says, because wait a minute. "They don't even work there, do they? You're just a lying liar who lies."

She smiles flippantly at him, setting the stolen copies of the employee photographs of the Louvre aside in favor of leaning back against her pillows and kicking him lightly with her foot, "Just testing you."

"I could be watching compelling French television right now."

"I could be in Baha right now." She retorts.

"So could I." He says mournfully.

Stiles had only ever contemplated leaving 'the life' once. He thinks maybe they all think about it, sometime or another.

His Babcia did it, Lydia's mom when she met her asshole of a first husband. But his own dad would probably be the best example Stiles could give.

His dad could easily be called one of the best thieves of all time, has been actually, more than once. When he was fourteen he stole a Van Gogh painting by replacing it with one he'd created himself. The museum housing it at the time, and all the ones that have housed it since then, still have no clue.

When he was seventeen he conned MI5 into leaving an important piece of evidence with him for no other reason than to draw foreign profanities all over it. He'd returned it, of course, but it had officially been inadmissible in court. The Whittemore's still owe them for it.

Back then, things were more relaxed, people were easier to fool. That still doesn't take from the fact that his teenage dad tricked Her Majesty's government for fun.

His dad was amazing.

He was basically another version of Stiles himself back then. All fun and games, whatever it takes.

When he was twenty seven he met Stiles' mom and stopped working proper jobs for three whole years just to be with her. He'd gotten a real job that he'd loved as much as he hated in a bar called The Beacon he'd later come to own. His mom had continued her college courses and picketing of various wars and they'd been happy for a long time.

She caught him casing one of her professor's houses and they'd had a huge fight that lasted weeks. She eventually told him to do what makes him happy instead of what he thinks will make her happy. She didn't care if he was a criminal, she just didn't want him lying, not when they were about to have a baby.

His grandparents had loved her for bringing him back. Loved her so much for bringing a new baby into the family.

Everybody had loved her, she was amazing too.

His dad had always said, love like that, for a living, breathing person instead of a work of art, only comes around once or twice in your lifetime. For his dad, it was just the once. Stiles doesn't think he'd let himself see it if it came around again.

Stiles met Anezka Vesely when he was sixteen.

Anezka was beautiful, funny and when she smiled at him her front teeth stuck out a little.

He'd fallen in love instantly.

Lydia's dad had just gone missing in the middle of Afghanistan and they were all looking for him, had been using all their favors up, just trying to find out if he was alive; Stiles had been on Lydia duty.

He met and fallen in love while the two of them were in Prague and entertained the idea, briefly, of leaving everything behind for the girl with the oversized front teeth.

Before he could ask his cousin's opinion, Lydia slipped his watch to catch a flight to Afghanistan.

He'd left Anezka behind in favor of going after his cousin and he'd regretted nothing.

When Stiles was eighteen he fell in love for a second time.

Danny Mahealani of Honolulu, Hawaii was a hacker. He'd already been in the life so Stiles didn't need to lie to him, not about most things anyway. He'd snarked the shit out of Stiles when they met and that was it for him, he was completely gone over the other man.

It'd been a heady, sweaty, sex-filled six months.

After that, a Reyes with thicker than usual eyebrows.

Then a Sheriff who had a beautiful back.

He's always kind of thought that he falls in love with people the way Lydia did with science experiments; like it's a game, a new toy to play with or a new security system to beat.

Lydia thinks falling in love is just a bunch of chemicals in the body.

Stiles thinks falling in love is loving the smallest things about somebody, their eyebrows or bunny teeth. Their snappy attitude or the muscles of their back.

He tends to fall quickly, like a forest fire.

What he feels for Derek Hale on the other hand, is a slow burn.

It's constant.

The way he feels about Derek is something that's been there since before he knew what love was. It was a humming under his skin he'd attributed to his ADD when he was younger. It was the way he needed to know the other man was okay, even if he had to 'sideline stalk' him through his family to find out.

It'd been there for so long, it'd become a part of him.

When he saw the Hale in Australia, he'd realised for the first time that all those other people had things about them he'd loved but Derek has them all.

His hands heal by the end of the week and he has a few brand new scars to show for it. He and Derek return to working out the air tanks and oxygen masks and it's easier this time, because while Stiles had been healing, Derek had been working. They're connected to one another perfectly now and he wonders how Derek managed to do it, considering technically the two objects weren't meant to be attached to each other.

He makes a note to ask later however, because he's gonna enjoy Derek's hands on him for as long as he can. However, trying not to shudder while the other man's hands are on him, showing him how to attach and reattach the tubes and plugs, is only made harder by his best friend sitting there and watching them avidly.

"You okay there, buddy?" He snaps because Jesus, a little privacy as he humiliates himself would be appreciated.

"I'm bored."

"You're bored." Derek deadpans.

"Better get used to it, McCall." Lydia says breezily, "Jail will be worse."

She's standing in front of her transparent whiteboard, re-writing the measurements of the room for them. They'd had to rub it off in favor of working out their various escape routes and Plans B, C and D if anything goes wrong, but soon they'd be going over timing again. Timing was everything.

Stiles rolls his eyes, swallowing back a gasp as he feels Derek's hand brush against his throat, "We're not going to jail."

"Well maybe not this time." Lydia agrees reluctantly. "But I can seriously see McCall getting busted as soon as you turn your back."

Derek huffs out a laugh and his breath is warm against the back of his neck, "Me too." He murmurs to Stiles. He steps away from Stiles, "Okay. Now you do it."

He gets it done in six point seven seconds and the proud smile Derek grants him gets him through the rest of the night.

Time seems to fly by over the next week until suddenly it's game day. Game day starts like days in Paris often do, with the sounds of traffic and the smell of baking bread waking Stiles up before he wants to be woken up. He sleepily goes through his morning routine; the only difference is he swaps out his usual flannel shirt for a plain black hoodie and his well-worn jeans for new black ones.

He's sitting at the dining room table when Lydia sails in wearing a private school uniform, dropping something in front of him before moving to the fridge. He's not looking at her but he can feel the judgement of his choice of cereal anyway. "You look like a thug."

Oh, so judgment of his outfit too.

"You look like a Japanese businessman's dream come true." He replies through a mouthful of cereal, "Now, what's this?" He asks poking at the thing she'd dropped in front of him.

"That's your new communication unit." She tells him. "One of only four in the world. It'll reach all three of the others at any time, as long as they're on. It'll work through the vents and underground. It's basically the best thing ever created." She says smugly before pausing in her search of the fridge and looking over at him. "Just don't get it wet."

"How the hell would I get it wet?"

"You'll figure out a way." She says simply as she pulls out a yogurt.

They're joined soon by Derek who looks like he just got out of the shower and Scott who looks like he just woke up. His best friend drops next to him with a loud huff and Stiles pushes the keys to a rental car towards him. "Here."

Scott swipes them up with a yawn, "Where do I return it?"

"Uh, you don't."

"Fake documents." Derek says helpfully, "You ditch it somewhere nobody will look. Besides, you can't return it when Stiles rented it, anyway."

"Welcome to the world of crime." Stiles tells his best friend. "Go have a shower."

Lydia slides into Scott's seat as soon as he leaves the room and the smell of her Greek yogurt makes him want to hurl, "That's disgusting."

"Don't be racist." She replies.

"Is Greek yogurt actually Greek?" He wonders, "Or is it like French fries in that it lies about its origin?"

Derek raises an eyebrow at him, "Seriously?"

"Shut up, I'm curious."

Lydia pouts down at her empty yogurt, "Just add it to the mental list of things you want to Google." She says.

"How do you know about my list?"

"Same way I know every other bit about your life." She replies, before getting up to grab another yogurt.

"Well that was a fantastic non-answer." He tells her. "Hidden cameras? Secretly a mind-reader? You can tell me."

She opens her new yogurt and scoops a large spoonful into her mouth, pointedly keeping quiet.

They all focus on their food while they wait for Scott to finish showering, Stiles and his ridiculously large bowl of cereal, Lydia and her yogurt and Derek and the orange he's produced out of nowhere and appears to be managing to eat without getting sticky juice everywhere. "You're good to go with the cameras?"

"Of course."

"And you know the bus timetable, right?" He double-checks.

She glares at him, "Of course I do." Either way, he can see her fingers itching to unravel her braid. She looks right at home in her private school uniform, and a lot younger than she really is. She'll blend right in.

"Everything will be fine." He promises her.

"Keep patronizing me," She tells him. "See what happens."

She leaves soon after and Scott not long after her and then it's just Derek and Stiles left in the apartment. Derek's bringing in the air tanks from the other room and Stiles is resolutely finishing his cereal because if he does end up in jail he's gonna freaking savour this. "If we get caught," He calls out, "Will you make sure you call my dad? Not my grandparents."

He can see out of the corner of his eye when Derek stops in the doorway, "We won't get caught."

Stiles turns to stare at him, "Dude, the probability of us getting caught is pretty freaking high. I just want to make sure you don't call the wro—"

"We won't get caught." Derek says again. "We have this, Stiles."

God, he hopes Derek is right.

"Why'd you come to me?" Derek asks when they're firmly ensconced in the ventilation systems of the Louvre. Lydia and Scott are somewhere below them with all the other tourists and students and Lydia's likely listening to this conversation as it happens; he wonders if Derek is aware of that.

Of course he is. Derek seems to be aware of everything.

"Laura would have jumped a plane to help, you know she would, and Fantine would have jumped through hoops," Derek continues. When Stiles turns to look back at him, he's smiling wryly, "She thinks she's in love with you."

Stiles is speechless.

His mouth hangs open in an unattractive 'O' shape because, did Derek seriously just wait to ask this until he literally couldn't use running away as a way of avoiding talking about feelings?

What?

Stiles swallows loudly, he knows he could say it was because Derek was one of the best in the business, that he could use the other man at his back. He could say it was because he knew Derek would love to pull one over on the Argents, would have done this job even if it meant no pay as long as it also meant the Argents lost a little of the seriously overabundance of pride they all seemed to have.

He could say all of those things and even though they were true he'd still be lying.

"I know she does." He says finally, after looking mournfully past Derek to try and judge how easily he could shuffle around and away from the other man. Not very easily considering it was already a squeeze as they moved in single-file. Damn. "I think I'm a bit in love with someone else though."

Thankfully, even as Derek opens his mouth to reply, Lydia's voice crackles over the comm, giving Stiles an excuse to look away from Derek's face. "Red Shirt? Are you in position yet, Red Shirt?"

"It's Red Hood." He corrects, trying (and failing) to ignore the tiny smile that appears on Derek's face in his peripheral vision. "As in the comic book character?"

"Don't be such a geek." Lydia commands.

"You're the one talking about Star Trek." He taunts, "Are you trying to get me killed?"

Derek wraps his hand around Stiles' ankle, "Almost there, Martin." He tells Lydia, using the codename she'd chosen. Stiles hated it on principal, but it was pretty unobtrusive, so four for Lydia in that respect.

Scott's voice interrupts Lydia's reply as it crackles onto the frequency, "Uh— guys?" He sounds unsure. "I'm in front of the fire alarm."

"Tell me you're not just standing there, staring at it." Lydia demands.

There's a long pause on the other side of the line and both Derek and Stiles shuffle forward in the vent, Stiles pushing the air tanks in front of him. He feels ridiculously uncomfortable as the only sounds he can hear are those of his and Derek's breathing and the tanks scraping lightly along the cool metal of the vents.

". . . No." Scott eventually mutters.

It's too early anyway, Stiles thinks as he looks down at his watch. Scott's way too early. Before he's given a chance to tell the other boy so, Derek speaks up from behind him, "You're too early, McCall." He rumbles, "Move away from the alarm until we say so. Go look at a painting or something."

Derek nudges Stiles' foot, "Jesus, Stilinski. Where'd you find this kid?"

Stiles honestly has nothing to say to that.

"Two minutes." Derek says when they're almost in place. "We're almost there."

"Wait."

Lydia's voice crackles to life on the other side of the comm unit and Stiles stops moving forward.

"What is it?" Derek asks, and it's weird to hear his voice coming from behind him as well as from the comm in his ear.

"Kate Argent is here."

Everything goes quiet in the vent before the comms alight with three different voices trying to be heard over one another.

"What is she doing here."

"How do you know what Kate Argent looks like?"

"Allison's aunt?!"

"No, the other Kate Argent."

"Seriously, how do you know what Kate Argent looks like, Lydia?"

"She's supposed to be in LA."

"How do you know that?"

"Why is she here?"

"Shut up." Lydia snaps. "McCall, stop talking right now. You're getting stared at."

"What? Why?"

"Because you look insane." She replies, "So stop talking."

"Stop talking right now." Stiles says. "Lydia, who saw him?"

"A guy who was checking him out before and isn't anymore because he looks like he might be a schizophrenic." She hisses.

"Was he made?" Derek asks.

"I don't think so."

"Good. Now," Stiles turns his head so he can see Derek, "Would you like to tell me how the hell you know she's supposed to be in LA?"

"I keep an eye in her."

"Are you still in love with her?" He demands.

Is he? The Hale had been ass over tits for the Argent all those years ago, could he really have been so in love with her that he'd forgiven what she did?

Derek looks hurt, "Of course not, Stiles. I just need to know where she is."

"Because in case you weren't aware, she's a total psycho."

"I actually think I know that better than you do." Derek retorts.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously?" Lydia echoes.

There's silence in the vents and on the comms as Stiles quietly fumes. He can hear Lydia and Scott breathing, but that's it.

It's enough.

Somewhere below them is the woman who set fire to Derek Hale's ancestral home, purposefully burning away hundreds of years of hard work and planning in the guise of artwork and jewels, and nearly killed the entire family in the process.

Because of this (because he wants to say 'are you okay'), Stiles hesitates slightly before offering; "Keep your enemies close?"

"Keep my enemies far, far away from me." Derek counters.

Stiles grins deprecatingly back at him, "Good philosophy."

"I honestly don't care," Lydia's voice tells them. "Unless this will be a problem."

And Derek doesn't even hesitate before saying, "It won't be."

The Stilinski's weren't a traditional family.

It's easy to see, what with all the criminal masterminds who come to dinner and sometimes stay long enough for breakfast. They didn't have nine to five jobs, their marriages were more time-honored than strictly legal and they didn't go to school with all the other kids their age.

Despite never going to high school or filling out an application, Lydia had gone to college for a semester. She'd hacked into the administration office and planted her name at the top of the scholarship list because, she'd said, it's not like she's ever paid for anything in her life and she's not about to start now when if anything, they should be paying her to attend their school.

MIT was somewhere the brilliant future scientists of the world went to get their jollies. It was filled with shiny equipment and genius professors and the courses she chose were so challenging that they probably would have made anybody else suffer a nervous breakdown.

If Lydia had been a normal girl-genius instead of a born and raised Stilinski, she would have loved it. Nevertheless, because she was a born and raised Stilinski, it wasn't long before she became bored with lectures telling her things she already knew or deemed 'a tedious waste of my time' and realised being part of a learning environment wasn't nearly as fun as the movies Stiles made her watch.

(Whatever, she totally owns all the American Pie movies and it's not like he bought them for her.)

She began commandeering whatever new equipment she needed to do her own experiments and MIT hadn't liked that so much, no matter how brilliant she was.

Apparently, colleges have rules.

And acquisition forms.

Lydia Stilinski had learnt how to make self-igniting Molotov cocktails when she was eleven, had completely upgraded their Family's security system when she was thirteen, had hacked into the Pentagon when she was seventeen and had lead the authorities on a merry chase ever since. She spoke thirteen languages, two of them dead ones, and could read scientific formulas like they were Dr. Suess books.

Because of her, technically, the entirety of the Stilinski Family didn't exist.

His cousin was so smart it was honestly scary.

Like, Sherlock Holmes without the drug habit, smart.

Too smart for college, smart.

If her IQ was ever going to be tested, Stiles knew her score would probably be some sort of Stephen Hawking type of thing.

She may have said Stiles was an idiot for not keeping up with manually turning off alarms and cameras, but she was probably the worst offender in the history of ever because if there was a harder way for her to do something? She'd do it. More than once, she'd actually designed a completely new way to do something instead of simply doing it twice.

One of the big differences between Stiles and Lydia was that he compartmentalised and fixated and simply forgot the simple things sometimes. His cousin on the other hand, once she'd learnt something, she knew it forever.

She didn't need to practise because Lydia Stilinski never forgot a thing.

After agreeing to be in charge of turning off the cameras long enough for Stiles and Derek to enter the room, she'd started writing down another list of options.

Option One had been to figure out a way to loop an image of a cleared room, simple, to the point. Stiles had used that tactic often and the movies were right; it worked if done right.

However, for a museum as big as the one they were casing, looping a camera feed was something that was difficult to do while it was still light outside and the museum was open and honestly pointless when it was dark and closed.

She'd figured out within minutes that there was no point in trying to get a good thirty five second image of a cleared room to loop when it was peak season for the Louvre so instead she went a different way; Option Two.

In the three weeks they'd had to prepare, the Louvre had been experiencing terrible technical difficulties they just couldn't explain.

Their cameras had been shorting out, skipping to different rooms at different times and to the Director's annoyance, the company they'd contacted to fix everything, the company they'd trusted for years, was completely booked until next month.

(Stiles himself had hacked all the phones in the Louvre and the personal mobile of the Director himself, just so they and nobody else would be able to answer when he'd call his security company about the problems their cameras were presenting.

They were terribly sorry of course but unfortunately, they'd told the Louvre, they'd just have to deal with it. The police have been contacted to keep a closer eye on the place, just in case. But, Derek had told them, the Louvre had been safely housing artwork for years. There hadn't been a theft since the early nineteen hundreds, not since before their security company was hired.

Lydia's 'annoyed secretary' voice was amazing and Derek's 'placating Head of Security' voice was spot-on.)

Option two was implemented in its entirety within twelve hours.

After that phone call, their next challenge had been the security measures in the ventilation system. Lasers to set off an entirely different sort of alarm, nerve gas that filled the vents if you put too much pressure in a particular spot.

This was slightly more difficult to disarm.

According to the text she sent while he and Derek were still in her apartment, Lydia had gotten it done while her bus was waiting in traffic.

He honestly wasn't even a little bit surprised.

Scott pulls the fire alarm and steps away from it quickly, easily blending into the scared tourists vacating the place, "Good luck, guys." He whispers as he exits the museum. He was warned to dump his gloves more than five blocks away and Stiles hopes he doesn't forget.

"Use protection." Stiles replies.

Derek and Stiles wait in the vents as the crowds move outside and all that's left is the sound of the alarm blaring. "I'm outside, Red Shirt."

"Red Hood." Stiles mutters.

"Just one mo— okay. Okay. Camera's are on the next wing. You've gone ghost." Lydia tells them. "You have nine minutes until the fire department gets here."

The air already feels thinner and Stiles sucks in one last, deep breath. "Masks and goggles." Derek mouths, pointing first to his eyes, then his ridiculously beautiful lips. Stiles can see his face slowly reddening and knows his is probably doing the same, maybe worse considering he's paler than the older man.

Stiles is thankful for all the practise they'd done on this because pulling the air tanks towards him, passing one to Derek and then attaching his tank to his oxygen mask was ridiculously hard in the confined space. However, he curses himself for not also practising holding his breath because he feels like he might explode.

Within what feels like seconds, his hands are shaking so badly, he almost drops his mask. He feels like he's drowning and just needs to take that one last breath. If he just takes just one more tiny breath, he'll be fine—

—Suddenly Derek's hands are on his, calmly helping him slip the oxygen mask over his face. "You're okay, Stiles." He says. "Just breathe."

He takes a deep, shuddering breath, the headache that was still in the middle of forming disappearing almost instantly. The rush of oxygen makes him dizzy, but in a good way. He feels high for a moment and he can totally see why this is some people's drug of choice.

(On the other hand, that might just be a rush of I-almost-died-oh-my-god because it feels familiar and that's always kind of been Stiles' drug of choice.)

"Better?"

"Better." He assures the older thief, face reddening in embarrassment rather than a lack of oxygen to the brain. "I'm good."

Derek hands him his pair of goggles and he tugs it over his head. "You good?" He asks, and his voice sounds muffled and his lips feel warm.

"Good." Derek confirms as he snaps his own goggles into place. Stiles can see his breath fogging up the mask.

Stiles attaches the drill to the screws, humming nervously as the loud noise infiltrates the silence as soon as he turns it on, "Think anybody heard that?" He calls over the noise. "Because that seemed louder than it did in the apartment."

"Not over the alarm," Derek reassures him, "We're still good. Just go."

Screws loosened, he pulls away the grating of the vent, placing it carefully away from the hatch. He pulls open the package of removable wall hooks he'd stuffed into his pocket (those things were ridiculously good and came right off when you were done, plus they left no marks, it was crazy. Never before had a household item helped him so much) and stuck one to the side of the vent, attaching his wire to it before dropping the rest of it down.

Sliding down a thin wire is more difficult in theory, honestly.

Peeling a painting off the wall on the other hand, isn't. Sure, it's simple enough, lift and pull — but there's always a brief, hold-your-breath moment as you lift it up because there's no way to tell if it's pressurised until you look underneath it and there's no way to tell if there had been a glitch when Lydia turned off the alarms until it was clear off the wall.

He eases it off carefully, breathing out a sigh of relief when it comes off easily. No pressure plates, no new alarms. He smiles down at the work of art, "Hello beautiful."

Derek walks up behind him, the covered canvas Lydia had dropped near the wall for them held tightly in his grasp. "All good?" He looks down at the painting in Stiles' gloved hands.

"Isn't she beautiful?" He murmurs. "Easily five hundred thousand."

The Hale leans the covered canvas against his leg and pulls out a handful of plastic sheeting, helping him wrap it carefully before leaning down to unzip the canvas cover and hold it open for him. "Steady."

"Six minutes." Lydia's voice tells them as they're easing the plastic-covered painting into the canvas cover. "Hurry up, I have better things to do than bail you out of jail again."

"That was one time." Stiles whines.

Lydia's humph of annoyance can barely be heard over the sirens but he just knows it happened.

"Almost done, I just need to put your canvas back." Derek assures her.

"I got it; you get our girl out of here." Stiles smirks him because holy crap, they just stole from the Louvre. That hadn't been done since the nineteen hundreds.

"Our girl?" Derek raises an eyebrow.

"You can have her every alternate Thursday."

The corner of Derek's mouth is still quirked like he's holding back a bark of laughter as he reattaches himself to the line. He's back in the vent within seconds and Stiles hands him the painting, being sure the other thief has a firm hold on it before he lets go of it. He quickly moves Lydia's blank canvas back to its spot on its easel before looking around once more, just to double check they've left nothing out of place and that everything looks—

Wait.

Oh god.

"Oh my god." He says faintly.

"What?" Derek calls, and Stiles can't hear him from above him, only through the comm. He must have kept moving. Good, he's got to get their girl out of there.

"Oh my god."

"What's wrong?" Lydia asks.

"There's a body." Stiles replies.

There's silence over the frequency for a beat, "A dead body?" Derek sounds confused.

Well, he's not looking at a corpse right now so he can go suck his confusion.

"No, a body of water." Stiles snaps, "Yes, a dead body."

It's a woman. From what he can see, she's a ridiculously pretty woman, with light brown hair in soft curls and expensive jeans on. She's lying half behind a piece of shitty modern art, on the other side of the room and how did he only just notice her? Suddenly the room seems a lot smaller.

He double-checks his oxygen mask is still over his mouth because he feels like he can't breathe again.

He might be having a panic attack right now.

"Jesus Christ." He mutters, falling forward to rest his hands against his knees, feeling like he may throw up. He's never seen a dead body before.

Maimed, bloodied and dying, yes, but not an actual dead body. He hadn't even seen his mom's body after she'd finally passed.

"Don't throw up." He mutters. "Don't throw up."

Lydia voice snaps over the comm, "Don't you dare throw up."

"I'm coming back." Derek tells him.

"Don't do that." He orders weakly. "You don't need to do that. Lydia, tell him to keep going."

"How dead is she?" Lydia asks instead.

"Pretty dead." He replies as he moves closer to the body, because her face is purple and puffed up and her lips are blue. She looks panicked. She'd died panicked.

"I mean, how long has she been dead." His cousin clarifies, sounding practical as always.

"Contrary to popular belief, Lydia, I'm actually not a coroner." He says, even as he looks around the room, taking note of the closed room and the alarm blaring.

Why didn't she leave when the alarm went off, he wonders. She's not wearing a security guard uniform so she must be a tourist. Still, you'd think she would have left when everybody else did. "There was plenty of time." He accuses her softly.

"What?"

"She was in the room, but she could have gotten out." He tells them. "There was plenty of time for her to get out."

"We'll then, why didn't she?" Lydia demands.

"Got a Ouija board?" He snaps, "Because that's the only way I'm gonna be able to ask her!"

"She was waiting."

Derek's voice echoes from the other side of the room and he looks back at him. The older thief's face looks blank as he stares across at Stiles next to the body. He was hanging halfway down the wire, as though he didn't want to step back in the room while there was a body there.

"For what?"

"Us."

"Don't be stupid." Lydia hisses down the line, "Nobody knows we're here, Hale."

"Just you, me, Lydia and Scott." Stiles agrees because where is Derek going with this? "We didn't tell anybody else."

"You, me, Lydia and Scott." He agrees before pointing angrily at the body, "And Kate Argent."

Holy shit. "Holy shit." Stiles says, stepping away from the body.

"Holy shit." Derek agrees.

"Two minutes." Lydia tells them.

"Guys," Stiles hesitates, "Did we just inadvertently kill Kate Argent?" He backs away from her, his panicked breathing fogging up the oxygen mask still attached to his face. "Killing people has got to be against the rules. This is like, right after robbing a nun. You just don't do it."

"One minute and forty seconds, Stiles." For the first time, Lydia sounds panicked too, so panicked she's forgone codenames entirely. He knows what she's thinking; what if this counted as them breaking the rules? "Leave her there."

"But—" He waves pathetically at the crumpled form of the woman who tried to destroy Derek's life, even though Lydia can't see him.

"Get out. Right now."

The Families all have rules, he supposes, though he only knows the Stilinski ones.

They weren't written down anywhere because that was just asking for a life sentence, instead they were drilled into their heads as children, 'do this, don't do that', 'say this, never say that', etc.

Stiles was five when he was taught the first of the rules, much to his mom's annoyance (she'd wanted to wait until he was older so he could make an informed decision).

He was sat down, next to Lydia and their older-by-a-few-years cousin Miguel and told the rules that just got you a slap on the wrist — the stupid superficial things that were mostly guidelines, stuff like 'don't take too much from one place' or 'don't sign your real name on anything, yes I mean first or last, Stiles, don't be stupid'.

The stricter rules came later, around the time puberty began. This time it was just Stiles and Lydia because Miguel had died the previous year; the whole thing had felt more somber that time around, without Miguel there to tease the fear out of them.

These new rules were more serious things like 'don't steal from a nun' or 'don't sell out your family, ever, no matter what' and they had punishments harsh enough that Stiles still shuddered to think about it. He'd always toed the line, taking advantage of loopholes and the codicils, but he'd never quite gone over. Honestly, Stiles had always been scared he'd one day actually break the rules and end up without a family.

The worst thing he could think of was being cut off entirely from his family (more commonly referred to as 'shunning'), no matter how impermanent it was.

Killing people?

That was so far out of the ballpark — he'd never even heard anything about it. Stilinski's just don't do it. They're criminals and thieves and scoundrels and gold diggers but they're not murderers.

They're not bad people.

While Stiles and Derek were making their way through the vents, Lydia had apparently immersed herself in the panicked and excited French, clinging to a nearby Parisian policeman as she sobbed theatrically and demanded he tell her when she'll be able to collect her half-finished painting.

The plan had been to split up, meet back at the apartment as soon as possible. Scott was to go to Allison's while Lydia was to go straight home. Derek and Stiles were going to waste time acting as tourists until they were all sure it was safe to be seen with one another. They'd even booked a motel in the slightly seedier part of Paris just in case they needed to lay low for a few days.

That's the way it was supposed to go.

Granted, there was also not meant to be a dead body in the middle of their heist.

Instead, Derek and Stiles watch from a nearby cafe with a few other bystanders as Lydia does her best impression of a spoilt school girl. Derek's holding onto the newly stolen painting tightly, his fingers going white from the pressure.

Twenty minutes later, she slips in beside them seamlessly and he knows his cousin is only half acting when she attaches herself to his side. He reaches out to grab at Derek's sleeve, "The apartment?" He asks.

Derek shakes his head minutely, "What if she wasn't alone?"

"We need to go pack. As soon as McCall comes back, we'll leave." Lydia argues.

"Leave it all." Stiles says. "Just in case."

They decide on the motel room, Stiles firing off a quick text to his best friend to let him know about their changed plans. He tells Scott to meet them at Conservatoire Rachmaninoff at eight o'clock that night, not to go back to Lydia's apartment for any reason. 'It's not safe' he tells his friend.

The motel manager smirks at them when they trudge past him and as he and Lydia move up the stairs, Stiles see's Derek slip him some extra cash to the man as they exchange low words with one another.

As soon as they're in their room, Stiles runs towards the bathroom, falling to his knees as his morning cereal makes itself known once more.

Outside the bathroom, Lydia closes and locks the shutters on the mid-day light and then closes and deadbolts the door once Derek has caught up. Stiles shudders over the toilet, frowning down at the mess he'd made. He flinches as Derek hands him a damp washcloth because he hadn't even heard him follow him into the bathroom.

"You okay?"

"Yeah." He says, though he's not entirely sure if he's lying or not.

For what feels like hours, they sit quietly in the dark. Even though it's the middle of the day Lydia refuses to open the shutters or turn the light on and Stiles is too tired to do it himself. Derek leans against the wall in the corner, glaring at the air in front of him while the painting rests by his feet, still in the canvas cover.

Using the supplied kitchenette, Lydia makes coffee, the strong, peels paint off walls stuff they both like and even though he knows Derek takes his with too much cream and sugar, he doesn't complain. Lydia changes into the pair of track pants Stiles had packed in the bag they'd stashed in the motel room, not complaining for once about the cheap material on her skin.

"What do we tell Dziadek?" She wonders, lightly fingering her iPhone.

Stiles blinks, quick and fast as he gulps down the coffee, "Do we tell him?" Already, his mind is switching into 'clean up' mode. Lydia might be the person he calls when he gets into messes, but he does know a thing or two about conning conmen. "We don't have to; nobody knows we were here, not even the Family."

Lydia's head snaps towards him as she glares, "Don't be stupid, of course we do. Trying to hide it would just make it worse; people will think we did it on purpose."

"Nobody will think anything at all if we don't tell anybody."

"You've been spending too much time with McCall." She hisses, "You know they'd find out some way or another and they'll wonder why we tried to hide it. If we tell somebody straight away we can make sure they're aware it's not our fault. We won't be blamed for this. We just need to stick to the rules—"

"What are the rules for this?" He interrupts, a note of hysteria in his voice because does Lydia honestly not understand this could be grounds for being shunned? "Has this happened before?"

He feels more than sees Derek moving from his gargoyle position by the corner, "She chose to stay in that room—"

"Thank you." Lydia interjects smugly.

"— even when everybody else was leaving." Derek continues, ignoring Lydia's interruption. He moves closer to Stiles, crouching down in front of him and holding his gaze as he says seriously; "That means we're not responsible, Stiles."

Stiles looks at the other man, the multicolored eyes of his partner in crime meeting his own as the older man's breath brushes against his cheeks. "We did not kill her." Derek tells him clearly, "She killed herself."

Stiles lets out the breath he hadn't realised he was holding in. A deep, bone-shaking shudder makes its way from his chest as he tentatively nods his head in agreement.

Derek and Lydia were right.

He turns to his cousin, "You're right." He tells her, "I'm sorry. We tell him exactly what happened."

Lydia reaches the hand not holding her phone out to him and he grabs it, squeezing tightly. "Of course I'm right." She tells him with an only slightly shaky smile and he knows they're okay again. He feels a brief surge of anger towards Scott because this is the second time he and his cousin have fought in the past month because of this heist. He knows if the choice came down to it, he'd take Lydia's happiness over Scott's.

"We don't know if she was alone, or if she had notes on us." She says, sounding practical as ever, "What we do know is that if she was waiting there for us, she had to have known we'd be there in the first place. How?"

Stiles frowns, turning to Derek as a horrifying idea comes to him. "You keep an eye on her, could she have done the same with you?"

"It's possible." The older thief says reluctantly.

"But not probable."

"No," He agrees, "It's not really her style."

Lydia hums, fingers lightly tapping on her phone. "Has McCall been messaging the Argent girl?"

"Why would that—?" Stiles starts before he snaps his mouth shut. A dawning look of horror crosses over his face and next to him, Derek glowers as he apparently arrives at the same conclusion. Scott was definitely the type to text somebody he fancied himself in love with without checking to make sure the line was secure first.

"No." He argues, "No way. He's not that stupid."

Lydia's raised eyebrow begs to differ.

"Stiles, are sure?" Derek asks him.

No.

No, he's not sure because while Scott has these absolutely brilliant moments sometimes, he's also the type of person nobody can claim is the brightest crayon in the box.

Scott relies on Stiles to tell him what needs to be done to stay safe in this life, from deleting his Facebook to hacking into America's government records to delete his existence from their files. He wouldn't go so far as to say that Scott would forget his own head if it wasn't screwed on, but when it came to things he or his Family would consider 'common knowledge', Scott was woefully ignorant. It was Stiles' job to look after Scott but he'd been so focused on keeping them out of jail and keeping his head on around Derek that he'd forgotten to make sure Scott was using a burner phone.

Or just, you know, not texting the authorities.

"Oh my god." He mutters, "I'm an idiot."

Dziadek answers the telephone on the second ring and that means he was in the kitchen already. Their grandparents huge house in Scandinavia only has the one landline after all, an old rotary thing that was falling apart and only still working thanks to years worth of tinkering at the hands of many cousins and their siblings.

Stiles can picture him in the airy kitchen now, looking out the window at his wife sculpting in the backyard while he slowly kneaded the perfect amount of salt and flour to bake bread.

His grandfather was an amazing cook, an absolute tyrant in the kitchen, actually. In this household, his Dziadek had told him when he was barely old enough to see over the bench, he doesn't eat anything he doesn't make himself. According to Lydia's mom, before Aiden and Ethan had come along and he'd given up after a shouting match had left them all not talking for weeks, his Dziadek had taught all his descendant how to make meals worthy of kings.

His grandmother was terrible at anything that didn't begin with 'put in microwave' and Stiles was just as hopeless. Much to his grandfather's annoyance, whenever he wasn't at their house, he lived on crappy takeout and street vendor food.

Stiles was just thankful the Stilinski patriarchhadn't tried to teach him how to cook because that would have ended bloody, one way or another.

Traditionally, their Dziadek was not a very warm man.

He was stricter than he was affectionate and never let any newfound ideas about childrearing stop him from slapping them all upside the head if they did something he thought was idiotic. He had a lot of opinions, his grandfather. He followed the rules to the letter, taught them all to do the same and Stiles honestly hates him as much as he loves him.

He knows the old man loves all his grandchildren and great-grandchildren more than anything else in the world, regardless of how stern he comes across and he's told his little cousins that very fact more than once. The problem is Stiles has always hated authority of any kind, regardless of whether or not it was for his benefit and his grandfather hated not being listened to.

Their relationship is a careful balance of respect, love and resentment and it's seemed to work well enough for them so far.

Lydia on the other hand, was the apple of his Dziadek's eye, so in the end she's the one who calls him.

Derek leaves the two of them alone in the room without being asked, which he appreciates because if his Dziadek knew somebody not of the Family was listening to them, there'd be hell to pay. Well, more hell, if Lydia fails in placating their grandfather.

She's better at laying down the facts in a nice pretty package. Stiles is more the lie until you get caught type.

He listens as his cousin converses with his grandfather in Polish, following along easily considering it was technically his first language. The speakerphone is on when she greets him happily when he answers the phone, asking about their Babcia and promising to visit soon. They had successfully stolen from the Louvre, she tells him smugly. They have a painting that would earn them easily six hundred thousand Euros and isn't that great, Dziadek?

Stiles gnaws at his fingernails as the sounds of his grandfather's proud voice echoes in the room and groans pathetically when she doesn't give him enough time to savor the sound before she launches into the one teeny, tiny detail that might be a problem.

Kate Argent's death is something they all know has been a long time coming. She was a terrible person, had crimes that were worse than burning down half of a house of a Family they were fond of but weren't technically associated with.

She'd been a part of Interpol a few years back and had caused a lot of trouble for his dad. She'd almost caught him, once, outside of Monaco when Stiles was thirteen. They'd been there for a long con and his dad had had to leave him in their hotel room for two weeks, unable to return for him lest Kate catch on he had a son. Eventually, Stiles had contacted his uncle who arrived the next day to take him back to his grandparents.

His dad had been on the run for two months because of Kate Argent's inability to let sleeping dogs lie. His dad has a scar on the side of his neck from the bullet Kate Argent 'accidently' shot him with.

Truthfully, her trying to kill a houseful of Hale's had simply been the last straw for them all.

His Dziadek is quiet for a long time once Lydia spills the beans and even though she'd downplayed Scott's idiocy as much as he was able to convince her to, he's worried at the silence. Stiles and his cousin crush closer together on the bed they're situated on as they listen to their grandfather humming thoughtfully. "I need to make some calls." Their grandfather says eventually, "Get on the phone to the Hale's."

He tells them to leave Paris as soon as possible. Don't go back to the apartment for anything, dump all your phones, don't use the airport. They're to call their parents as soon as they're safe, no sooner, to let them know what's happening. Lydia, he says, you make sure you call your mother. She's missed you.

Lydia's hands are shaking as she promises to follow his instructions and Stiles curls one of his own around the one holding the phone to steady her. "We'll leave tonight." He tells the older man.

"You'll come home now." Their Dziadek orders right before hanging up on them. "Don't bring the McCall boy."

And if they both end up sitting in the dark room just listening to the dial tone for a good five minutes, that's nobody's business but their own.

At five to eight, from his spot across the street, Stiles spots Scott outside the Conservatoire Rachmaninoff as planned, and presses the call button on his phone. Derek and Lydia are standing by the side of the road at the far end of the street and the only reason he can still see them through the crush of people searching for a place to eat dinner is because Lydia's hair is literally a torch.

He watches his best friend look around for him even as he pulls out his phone, looking at the caller id. Oh, Scott, caller id? "Have you been calling Allison?" He asks, as soon as a confused looking Scott answers.

"What? Stiles? Where are you?"

Watching the other boy looking around for him, he shifts uncomfortably in his seat. "Scott, listen to me, have you been calling Allison?" He says again, louder this time and a few of his neighboring foodies start to stare. He smiles back politely until they look away. "Or texting? Tweeting. Instagram-ing, anything?"

"Uh— yes?" Scott sounds a bit worried now, "We've been texting every night. Was I not supposed to?"

"Jesus Christ, Scott." He hisses down the line, "Of course you weren't." He brings a hand up to massage his eyes, "Somebody's been reading her texts, and they knew we were going to be there."

"Are you okay?"

Stiles huffs out a breath, smiling slightly at the genuine alarm in the other boys voice, "We're okay. We just— we need to go away for a while. Me, Lydia and Derek."

"You're leaving me?" Scott yelps, "You're leaving me in Paris?"

"If you ask the girl at the counter, she'll give you a package. There's some cash in there and a passport I had made for you. You should get out of Paris, too." He says instead of answering because this hurts.

He'd always half-known he and Scott weren't going to be able to stay friends forever, they were too different. Scott wanted a life, a pretty girl, maybe a white picket fence or something. Stiles couldn't stand the idea of living in just one house for the rest of his life, let alone one with a picket fence and a stay-at-home wife.

Still, actually parting ways with the boy he's come to see as a brother feels like somebody is stabbing him in the chest. "I'll meet you in a few weeks." He promises. "If you still want to."

In the bag he'd left with the girl, there's more cash than Scott probably knows what to do with. Euros, dollars and dirham's stacked under a passport and a train schedule. He's left a burner phone with his new contact number plugged in, as well as a letter detailing that the other boy should only call if he needs help. There's enough in there for a brand new life if Scott wants it and Stiles has a feeling he'll probably take it.

Scott's quiet for a long time, "I'm sorry, Stiles."

"I know, dude." He replies because he does know. "You made a mistake. In a few weeks we'll meet up and you can buy me copious amounts of alcohol to make up for it. We'll be square."

Scott chuckles softly, "Yeah, right."

"Scott, seriously man. You, me, The Beacon. In two months, okay?"

"Okay." His best friend agrees. "I'll see you there."

Stiles hangs up before he can second-guess himself, watching in pain as Scott's shoulders droop. "Fuck." He murmurs. As soon as Scott steps inside, he gets up to go meet Derek and his cousin.

They have a train to catch.

Derek leaves Lydia and Stiles after the fourth stop their train makes. He's going back to Australia, he tells them. But he thinks he might stop by the house to see his family first.

"Dude." Stiles grins at the other man, holding his hand out for a congratulatory fist bump.

Derek frowns down at it and then at Stiles, "Seriously?"

"Just do it, Hale." Lydia speaks up from her spot on the other side of the train compartment. She'd been hogging that entire bench since they'd shut the door behind them, refusing to even let Stiles put his feet up on it. She has a small collection of French and English fashion magazines she'd bought while they were waiting for the train to arrive stacked by her feet and the painting that had caused so many problems tucked carefully in the overhead compartment over her head. "He'll follow you home if you don't."

Derek reluctantly presses his fist to Stiles' before saying goodbye to them both. "Nice doing business with you." He says sincerely. "Call me if anything else pops up."

Lydia does end up calling her mom like she'd promised, though the conversation is brief. Her mom is proud too, but in a smug kind of way. Lydia Stilinski was her mother's greatest achievement and the fact that Lydia had beat all the other cousins (because apparently Stiles wasn't counted in that, thanks Aunt Evelyn) to robbing such a large museum was cause enough for her to go out for a celebratory drink. With a man not her husband, of course.

(She'd barely even registered the fact that Lydia had said Kate Argent was dead; the only sign she'd heard had been the snapped, "Good riddance." in between her gloating.)

Stiles' phone call to his dad goes a lot better, if he does say so himself, for all the trouble he had to go through to have it. The older thief doesn't answer the first two times he rings so he ends up sending a coded message that basically says he's going to go visit the grandparents and please call him back because he has news god-damn it.

His dad rings back a few hours later, when it's dark outside and he's in the middle of a little something called sleep. The ringing makes him open his eyes, and he blinks blearily at the mauve pattern of the padded bench he'd fallen asleep on. The Blackberry he'll need to throw out the window soon is buried underneath him and he clumsily tries to find the answer button. "Hello?" He answers groggily when he finally manages to find the right key to press.

"Stiles?" His dad sounds worried, "You okay, son?"

Stiles blinks his eyes, yawning loudly as he replies hazily, "Oh yeah, fine, you know. Just successfully robbed the Louvre. Thought you should know."

His dad is silent on the other side for so long Stiles almost falls back asleep, "Are you lying right now?" His dad asks.

"Nope."

"Because this isn't something you lie about." His dad continues.

Stiles chuckles sleepily, turning over so he's facing the compartment and not the back of the padded bench. "I'm not lying. Lydia was there too."

"Shut the fuck up, Stiles." Said cousin grunts in her sleep.

Well, he thinks she's still asleep. He looks over at the girl and yep, she's asleep. Creepy.

"You're both okay?" He dad asks, uncomfortably.

His dad had never been the world's best dad, he might have tried his hardest but Stiles always been a bit of a mommy's boy and his dad was a bit awkward in general and hopeless when it came to affection.

He'd been an accident, he's pretty sure, though his mom hadn't cared. She'd apparently always wanted kids. He honestly doesn't think his dad thought him unwanted either — though he'd been unprepared for fatherhood — not when his mom had been so happy about his existence. His dad couldn't have denied his mom anything.

While she was alive, his dad had treated him like a mini-me. Teaching him everything he knew like it was a game and leaving all the actual parenting to his wife. Seriously, his Babcia still has the video recordings of his dad dressing him up as a cat burglar for his first costume party.

When his mom had died Stiles had been inconsolable but his dad had spiralled so badly he might have even forgotten he'd had a son for a while, there.

It took a few months, but he'd eventually stepped up to act the father to his son. He'd first tried implementing bedtimes and schedules and that hadn't worked well for either of them; it had all been very difficult for a while. Very messy.

Thankfully, their relationship grew stronger later in Stiles' life. The travelling they'd done together during his teenage years had helped define their bond; turning their awkward attempts at physical affection to genuine fondness and admiration for one another displayed with occasional bro-hugs and pats on the back.

It would never be like it was when his mom had been still around, but it was the best they could do and it seemed to work for them.

"We're all good. It's just—" Stiles pauses, wondering how he's going to explain this, "Kate Argent is dead." He blurts.

Stiles can imagine the look on his dad's face, when he says flatly, "What."

"She got caught up in the heist," Stiles says, rubbing his eyes until he sees fireworks behind his eyelids because he can still see her face. "It was an accident."

"You didn't kill her." His dad sounds matter-of-fact and Stiles has to smile because they'd had their ups and downs but his dad knew him.

"No." He agrees. "She was trying to catch us in the act but the room sucked out all the oxygen as a failsafe."

"She didn't have a mask?" His dad guesses.

"Air tanks and oxygen masks, kids." Stiles supplies helpfully, "They're lifesavers."

His dad snorts, "Literally, apparently."

"Bitch to carry, though."

They talk until Stiles falls asleep to the sound of his dad's voice, something he hasn't done since his early teens and he wakes with a crick in his neck and the sound of Lydia cussing out somebody outside their door.

The train has stopped moving sometimes between falling asleep and waking up and he sits up to look outside the window. He doesn't recognise the train stop at all. Lydia re-enters the compartment, snapping the door shut behind her. "Kate Argent's body has been found." She tells him before he can open his mouth to say 'good morning'. "In the same room as the stolen painting." She starts grinning smugly, "Police have said nothing official of course, but the papers already think she was attempting to steal it and had been backstabbed by her partner."

She plops down onto her claimed bench, right under said painting. "The Argent family is rushing to say they haven't been in contact with Kate for years."

He wrinkles his nose at that, because he couldn't imagine turning your back on a family member, in life or death. Yet another way the Argents were different from them. "Anything about us? Or this mystery partner?"

"Nothing."

"So we might be in the clear?" He asks hopefully.

His cousin kicks at his legs, smiling just as optimistically, "It looks that way."

For the first time since he'd picked up the painting, Stiles feels himself start to relax.

Five weeks later, after a lengthy visit with the Family as they waited for the heat to die down — something that took less time than expected and yet wasn't that surprising considering the last thing that had been stolen from the Louvre had been the Mona Lisa (their girl was much less famous and worth a whole lot less to boot) — Stiles finds Derek in the same place he found him at the start of all this; on a beach in Bondi with a surfboard and an ugly necklace.

"You're still walking around with that thing?" He calls out sceptically.

"What are you doing here, Stiles?" Derek calls back as he comes up the sand towards him, body still wet from the blue sea water.

"I have another job." He answers when Derek's a foot away, shrugging casually. "Or I came to stay."

At Derek's shocked silence, he steps closer to the older man, his chest brushing against Derek's. If he tilted his head up, just a bit, they could be kissing.

"And in case you were wondering, this is me offering you a purely business-like partnership." He tugs lightly on Derek's ugly Aborigine necklace. "And a not-so-business-like partnership."

He grins at the older man, "Options." He jazz-hands.

Derek stabs his surfboard into the sand by his feet, "Those are my only two options?" He smiles, open and happy.

It's beautiful.

He's missed seeing that aimed at him.

"Yeah." Stiles says, dry-mouthed. "That's it."

"And if I pick the purely business-like partnership, will McCall be a part of this job?" The older thief asks teasingly.

Stiles frowns as a pang of sadness stabs at his house, "Nah. Didn't you hear? He retired."

"I'm sorry, Stiles." Derek says sincerely.

"Well, he was pretty terrible." Stiles admits, "And I'm happy for him."

And he is. From the texts he receives sporadically (Lydia had warned him not to give that number to his friend, considering his inability to understand the words 'only if you need help' but Stiles regrets nothing), Stiles knows Scott is happy in his new life. He's thinking of maybe doing the college thing with Allison and he's recreated his Facebook page, much to his mom's relief.

Derek leans down, "He was terrible," He agrees, "But I'm honestly more concerned with finding out what would happen if I was interested in the other kind of partnership?"

He grins then, slow and smug, but he's not really given a chance to reply to that because he's too busy being kissed.

Four for him.