Hello! So, I've been incredibly (and shamefully) silent on this site since finishing my Clockwork Princess story. Since then, I've sort of become obsessed with Teen Wolf- in particular, a shipping in Teen Wolf. In Even-More Particular, Scisaac. I absolutely love it so much, hence this fanfic. Let me know if you like this so far. If anyone A) reads it and B) actually likes it (in which case I will totally freak out), I'll probably continue this into a medium to long story with gradual development of Scisaac, possibly following canon events that occur in the episodes as they are released. This is set just after the end of 3x06, and it's pretty un-eventful. I really hope this isn't terrible! Please review

Scott didn't know much about Isaac Lahey. Of course, that was probably owing to the simple fact that he hadn't spent much time getting to know the guy- and it wasn't like Isaac was a big one for conversations. Still, there was just something about him. Something about the way he asked to be bitten when Derek offered. Scott remembered when he first got the bite- how completely unwanted it had been. How it had come- literally- out of nowhere, and how, even with Stiles going on and on about how he was some kind of super-freaky-werewolf now, all he'd cared about was going on a date with Allison. Even now, all he cared about was getting her back. Had Derek approached him- either now, or then, with that same offer that he had given Isaac- if Scott had been given the choice, there was not a doubt in his mind that his reply would consist of two words, and two words only: Hell No.

But Isaac was not Scott, and Isaac had had the choice. And Isaac had said yes. There was something perplexing about that- something that kept chasing Scott's thoughts in circles even now as he sat in his room running his fingers through his hair in agitation, his English homework lying open on his desk, the empty pages guilt tripping him every now and then into writing a word or two before he would put his pen down in exasperation and just go back to thinking about the boy in the next room- who had chosen to be a werewolf, chosen to stay in Beacon Hills when Erica and Boyd would have fled, and, of all people, chosen to trust Scott- to come to him in the middle of the night with his shirt dripping wet and his bag of things even worse.

His mum had been practically humming with worry ever since Isaac entered the door.

"Of course he can stay," she'd said at once when she was asked, and she'd given Isaac the Mothering Smile that Scott had seen her practicing in front of the mirror before. "You can have the guest room, Isaac. Let me know if there's anything you need- sheets missing on the bed, that kind of thing. I'm afraid I'm not at home a lot- I don't really do a lot of house-keeping as such." And then she had looked at Scott with wide eyes that said We'll Talk About This Later. As soon as she'd convinced Isaac to borrow some clothes of Scott's to sleep in and go have a shower, that's exactly what they did.

"Scott, who is that boy?" she'd asked him with none of her usual casual demeanor.

"A friend of mine. He's on the lacrosse team with me and Stiles," he shrugged, not wanting to let on any more than he had to- although, apart from the whole werewolf thing, Scott wondered what else he really could say about Isaac Lahey.

"For goodness sake Scott, is this the boy whose father was murdered? The one they had at the police station a while back?"

"It's okay, mum. You know he didn't actually kill his dad, right? They were just asking him a few questions. He was cleared. I'm not asking you to harbour a fugitive here."

"That's not what I meant. Scott, his father- you do know what he did to him, don't you? He was…abusive. In the most barbaric ways possible, too. It's just awful. No child deserves to be raised in an environment like that, you know? He's probably traumatised," she said, and even though she was talking quietly, Scott cringed, knowing that Isaac could hear everything that was being said from the shower, even over the roaring water system. "Who has he been staying with since his father died? Do you know… but why is he here, then? He looked pretty shaken up when I answered the door, Scott."

I know, he'd thought, but he just put his hands on his mother's shoulders.

"He's alright. He'll be alright. I mean, some things might be going on with him, but… it's all I can do is have him over, right?"

Slowly, she gave him a smile. "Right. Yeah- you're right, Scott. I'm so proud of you, you know. I raised my son to be a good friend."

"Now you're taking credit for the way I treat my friends?" Scott rolled his eyes, trying to lighten the mood. Melissa smiled and shook her head, reaching over to ruffle his hair before she closed her eyes and sighed.

"I'm working the late shift again tonight. I'd better get going." Before she'd gone, she looked back at Scott over her shoulder and added, "tell Isaac to make himself at home, won't you?"

Since then, more or less, it seemed like he had. In the sense that he barely ever left his room. Like, ever. In the mornings Scott only saw Isaac right when he was heading out the door to go to school, and at night he barely saw him at all. In fact, with the exception of intercepting Scott on his way to risky-werewolf-oriented things, Scott didn't see Isaac around at all. Which was why, when he heard a knock on his door that night, he was surprised when he turned around to see Isaac, not his mother, standing in the doorway.

"Not interrupting anything, am I?" Isaac asked. Scott stared at him for a moment, eyes darting back to his homework on the desk before he shook his head hastily, chuckling.

"Honestly, I'm glad for the interruption. My non-existent progress on this is getting sort of depressing," he said.

"Mine's the same- except it's math, so I doubt I'll even get credit for writing a couple of random words down."

"I don't even know what I've written there," Scott admitted, and Isaac moved forward, leaning over the desk to read, his head cocked to the side as he read out-loud, "Allison, Allison… oh hey, look, it's Allison again." He smirked at Scott. "Very insightful. I'm sure Miss Blake will appreciate it."

"What does yours say, then?" Scott said, scrambling to tug his work away from Isaac before his cheeks got too red from embarrassment- but mostly before he could read the part where Scott realised he'd started to write down Isaac's own name- a consequence of the time he'd been spending wondering after Isaac, and the reasons he did the things he did. He tried to think of someone he could tease Isaac about. "Boyd, Boyd, Boyd?" He couldn't really think of anyone else- mainly because Isaac didn't seem to spend time with anyone else.

Isaac was too amused about Scott's predicament to care much, and he just shrugged.

"Anyway, um," Scott coughed, " was there… was there something you wanted to talk about?"

Isaac stopped smiling and looked at his feet. "Um, yeah. Yeah, there was."

"Alright," Scott said cautiously.

"At that Motel," Isaac began, "with the wolfsbane. All of us…we were all effected, yes? Boyd, Ethan, myself- and you."

Scott inclined his head.

"But you found the flares. I mean, none of the rest of us had thought of that, but you found them."

"Yeah, I guess I overheard Stiles and Lydia talking about it," he said.

"And you told me when we got back that that's all it was," Isaac continued, "that you went to find them because you overheard them and you had a feeling that it would snap you out of it. That Stiles found you, and you touched the heat, and you got better."

"Yeah." That was what Scott had told Isaac. With everything that had happened, and everything that he had felt and witnessed and been through that night, he figured thinking about it, much less talking about it, wasn't a good idea. There had been no reason to tell Isaac or Boyd or anyone that wasn't there how desperate he'd really felt- how close he'd really come, or how unsure he was, even now, of whether it had been the wolfsbane or his own conscience that had driven him to stand in the middle of the rain and the gasoline, a ticking time bomb in his hand.

Isaac looked at him then from under his lashes, his gaze unwavering. "I wanted to ask you if that was a lie."

Scott let go of a breath he hadn't been aware he'd been holding in, staring at Isaac and not knowing what he could possibly say.

"I, uh," he hesitated, "I'm fine, Isaac," he settled for that.

"That doesn't answer my question," he said, and then he sighed. "Stiles looked like he'd just seen a ghost or something, and Allison was practically crying when I got to the bus. I just want to know if something else happened. Or, if you lied to me, at least tell me why you lied...please, Scott."

Scott couldn't look at Isaac anymore, so he laced his fingers together in his lap and looked at them instead, suddenly fascinated by his own hands. For a long time, he was silent, because that was just another thing about Isaac. It was not that he was difficult to lie to- it's not like Scott couldn't have gotten away with it if he really wanted to. But there was something about him that made Scott not want to lie to him. Still, he didn't want to tell the truth, either.

"I have a question for you, too," he said slowly. Now Isaac was the one who was uneasy.

"What do you want to know?" his tone was guarded- guarded in the manner of a person who'd lived their life needing to be guarded, needing to be brief and mistrusting. Without meaning to, Scott said,

"I want to know why you do that. Why do you sound like that- like I'm about to launch into some interrogation. Like I have a right to ask you questions, even though you asked me first?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do." Scott persisted.

"Well, so do you then," Isaac almost snapped. Reflexively, his hand went up to touch the skin underneath his eye before dropping it back to his side, abashed. Scott watched him, a tight knot in his stomach as he realised. His father. Even now he was dead, it was still his father.

"I'm not like that, Isaac. I'm not… bigger than you," he said, trying to be as reassuring as he could- and as honest. "I'm not going to try to make myself bigger than you."

"I know you're not," Isaac said briefly: factually, like there's nothing to it. "Guess old habits die hard. That's it. Will you answer my question now?"

"Yes."

"'yes' you will answer my question, or 'yes', you did lie?"

Scott swallowed hard. "Yes, I, uh, may have omitted certain things when I recapped what went on that night," he said sheepishly. He looked quickly at Isaac, dreading the look of betrayal on his face that he thought might have appeared there, but his expression was virtually unreadable. "Look, man, it wasn't…it's not that I don't trust you with the truth or whatever. It's nothing important, even- nothing that effects any of the rest of us, or the Alpha pack, any of it. It's just not something I want to relive all too much, so I sort of left out those details."

"Okay."

"Okay?" Scott said, unsure as to what 'Okay' meant when it was coming from Isaac.

"Yeah, Scott, it's okay," Isaac said, his voice unexpectedly gentle. He edged a little closer, clapping a hand a little awkwardly on his arm. "I get it. Thanks…y'know, for telling me that you lied, though."

"Sorry I lied in the first place," Scott said, feeling really quite guilty about it all now.

Isaac looked at him for a moment, and then he sighed. "I just want to know you're okay, man."

Scott was a little taken aback by that, but before he could say anything in response, Isaac's hand had left his arm, and his phone started vibrating like crazy in his pocket.

"Oh, uh, I should get that," he mumbled, gesturing to the phone as he drew it out, seeing Stiles on the caller ID. Isaac rolled his eyes. Obviously it was Stiles.

"Hello?" Scott answered the phone, eyes still drifting back to Isaac. Isaac who, according to his words not a moment ago, was worried for his welfare, despite everything that he himself was dealing with.

"Scott. Thank god, dude. Listen, I need you over at my house, like, right now," Stiles yell-whispered into the phone.

"Like, now now? I'm kind of beat, to be honest, man." That, and this was the first proper conversation he'd had with Isaac for a while. He didn't want it to end just yet- especially after Isaac had just said the most curious thing. "What's going on?"

"I don't know if this is good news or bad news…"

"Stiles," Scott said. He glanced at Isaac, who was leaned against his bedroom wall, arms folded as he listened in to their conversation, interest peaked.

"You know what Ethan said, about Derek probably being alive?"

"Yeah, I mean, I hope he's right." Derek. Scott had barely gone five minutes without freaking out about that- hoping that Ethan was telling the truth, but then freaking out some more because even if he was, what chance did Derek have against the Alphas?

"Huh. Good news it is then, I suppose- because 'probably' just became 'definitely'."

Isaac and Scott looked at each other, eyes wide.
'What?' Isaac mouthed at Scott, who just shook his head, bewildered.

"Hold on Stiles… did you just say Derek is alive?"

"You heard me right."

Scott froze, the static holding Stiles' voice echoing over again in his head, and his heart started beating euphorically fast with a relief that had him sinking back in his chair, eyes closed.

"Scott? You hear me, buddy? Hello?" Stiles mused into the phone.

"Scott," Isaac said, and Scott opened his eyes, shaking his head back into the moment.

"Uh, yeah- yeah I hear you," he said. "I'm just so…" he sighed, long and slow, and he damn near laughed into the phone before he started asking questions again. "Wait, how alive is he?"

"Are we talking 'quality of life' or…?"

Isaac snorted, and Scott said, "Stiles, you know what I mean. When did you see him- did you even see him? Is he injured?" Another thought occurred to him, and he shuddered, "have the Alpha Pack got him?"

"Calm down. The man's fine. Fine enough to give me a freaking heart attack when he showed up in the corner of my room just now. No visible injuries. He's pretty moody and insensitive, which is a sure sign that everything is A-O-kay in the world of Derek." Scott couldn't believe it when he heard a familiar grunt of disapproval somewhere on Stiles' end of the line.

"Derek's alive," he exhaled. "Derek's alive- wait, Derek's at your house? Why is he at your house?"

"How should I know? The guy does what he wants," Stiles sounded annoyed. Scott, in spite of everything, laughed.

"Tell him me and Isaac will be right there," he said.

"Oh, great, Lahey's coming over too. Sleepover at Stiles' house!" Stiles said in mock-cheeriness. Isaac glared at the phone. "Derek wants you to get Boyd here if you can as well- or at least let him know what's going on."

"Will do," Scott said, and just as he was about to hang up, he caught a snippet of Stiles' sentence as he said,

"-yeah, I told him all that! Jesus! Will you calm dow- okayokayokaywowthathurts you can let go of me now Derek-"

Scott had a smile on his face when he slipped his phone into the pocket of his jeans and looked up at Isaac, an expectant look in his eyes.

"Sounds like we should hurry," he grinned.