surely not what you thought it'd be

[stiles]

It feels weird to be planning a wedding now.

Well, deep down inside, some part of Stiles can recognize that planning a wedding at any time would feel weird. It’s just that now, it’s become apparent their daughter can shift before she can even roll over, and everything else in their lives has seemed to pale in comparison.

In the week since that morning when Ava suddenly had four paws and a tail, it feels like their lives had contained little else. A shifting baby had been enough to warrant a pack meeting in the loft, but it had left them with no real answers. In fact, it had only left Stiles with a pissed off Malia after Scott, Derek, and Liam had thought it was a good idea to see if they could induce a second shift, and the weird realization that it’s already become weird to see Scott without Nat by his side. But still, the full moon loomed, and still, they had no concrete strategies to handle it.

Wolfsbane was out of the question, Stiles had argued adamantly, if there was no way to not expose Malia. Malia was against the idea of trying to give her enough baby Benadryl to sleep right through it. Thankfully, not even Liam was dense enough to suggest a cage for the tiny infant. But that left them with only Malia as her anchor.

At least Derek offered to reach out to family, and Scott volunteered to contact Hannah’s pack of coyotes in Michigan. (Again, thankfully, no one suggested a call to Peter Hale.) And Stiles took the corners of the internet they had discovered in the last decade, places where people like Scott and Derek and Malia found each other and shared information.

Ava’s ability to shift had taken over their group chat. It had filled the late night conversations Stiles had with Malia, sometimes while he was inside of her and she rocked her hips against his. It had filled his every thought at work, making him even less effective in the line of duty than he normally was. Which was why it had felt a little ridiculous when Melissa had reached out to Malia about dress shopping.

No part of Stiles was shocked when his fiance had balked at the suggestion, or when she texted Melissa back a very matter-of-fact No when Melissa’s question (When would be a good day for dress shopping?) hadn’t been of the yes/no variety. But he was marrying a girl whose stubbornness rivaled his own, and she had dug in her heels until he had stressed that if she waited any longer, there would be no dress come May. Braden agreeing to go with Melissa and Lydia had been enough to make Malia reluctantly agree, and Stiles had breathed a sigh of relief.

Still, this morning, she had refused again, reciting for him all of the reasons why it was stupid while she showered and dressed and nursed the baby one last time before she left. She had argued that it was a waste of her time once more on the threshold as he had taken the baby from her arms and reminded her, I can’t marry you if you’re naked. And with a kiss, she had finally begrudgingly left, leaving him very aware of the fact that he would owe her at some point for putting her through the torture of traditional wedding elements.

In the meantime, Scott had come over to work on the problem of Ava’s shifting again. While the baby napped, they had spread their collected notes across the kitchen table, reasoning through the limited information and even more limited methods they had to stifle a shift. It had left Stiles with a headache and a knot in the pit of his stomach, but at least he didn’t end up on the verge of hyperventilating this time. Even if he was still grateful when Ava awoke and then had to stop.

Especially when Ava wakes up ravenous, rooting against Stiles’s chest the second he has her in his arms. He had expected Malia to be home by now, but he checks his phone to find that she still hasn’t texted even though he checked in a while ago, so a bottle it is. He settles her into her swing before he moves into the kitchen to start heating a bottle. It’s just barely finished when he hears Scott growl from the next room. Craning his neck, Stiles sees Scott kneeling before her swing, baring his teeth.

“Can you stop trying to make my kid shift?” he groans as he twists the nipple onto the bottle. “Especially when Ava’s not here to be her anchor.” Shaking the bottle back and forth, Stiles tests the milk on his wrist and then swears when it’s too hot for even him. As he waits for it to cool, he moves back into the living room in time to see Scott flash his red alpha eyes at the baby who simply stares back, sucking away at her pacifier, complete unphased by the alpha before her. “Though she is kind of a badass, isn’t she?”

Before Scott can respond, the front door opens. It closes swiftly, falling shut with a thud, followed by the sound of quick footsteps. When Malia turns the corner, Scott and Stiles both turn their heads. Some of her hair has escaped the bun on top of her head, and her tank hangs crookedly so he can make out the strap of her bra, like it was pulled on haphazardly in a rush. But he ignores that as he flashes her a smile instead. “Hey!” he greets her from his spot beside Scott who may or may not still have bright red eyes. “How’d it go?”

[malia]

Malia hated shopping. She hated it so much that there were very few things she hated more. In fact, she could probably count them on the fingers of one hand. So the day being dragged from store to store with a carful of women who were much more excited about this dress than she was had been a nightmare. All of the dresses looked the same to her. Too frilly, too lacy, too…too much. Pearls, sequins, uncomfortable and scratchy and wrong. All wrong. So by the time she gets home, with no dress to show for the day mind you, she’s very aggravated. The only good part of the day had been the lunch that they’d gotten, pizza, and that hadn’t lasted nearly long enough before they were back in the car and off to the next store.

They’d been beyond patient with her, and even she knows she must not have been the best company. But she doesn’t think to apologize when she parts ways with them, though maybe she should have.

She knows Scotts there before she even walks in the door, and she would have even if she hadn’t seen his car in the driveway. She can smell him, sense him. And Stiles had mentioned that he would be coming over so they could try to figure out some things with Ava that morning, she’s not entirely surprised that he’s still there when she gets home even though it’s later than she thought it would be.

But she is surprised to walk into the room and see his bright red eyes staring back at her as he stands there in front of Ava’s swing. She immediately feels on edge, protective of the baby, and she bares her own teeth at her alpha…offering him a warning growl.

“What’s going on,” She asks, moving closer. She trusts Scott. It’s not that she doesn’t trust Scott. And Scott was just as much Ava’s Alpha as he was hers. But they’d been constant with the baby, trying to figure out what had triggered her shift, if it was just a fluke or something that would continue to happen. And her instincts as Ava’s mother have been extra on edge and extra alert since that morning when they’d found out their daughter could fully transform before she could even walk.

[stiles]

Stiles can tell the answer is Not good before Malia even says a word, but he’s kind of a sucker for punishment, so he remains hopeful. Even when everything about her seems tense. And that’s before she has the gall to bare her teeth and growl at her alpha. Stiles raises his brow in her direction, a silent Really? But Scott’s eyes drop that red glow immediately, and he straightens from his haunches almost sheepishly. There’s something new here, some altering in this hierarchy now that Malia has given birth to the newest beta, but as much as Stiles wants to puzzle it out in that moment, now isn’t the time.

“See?” he says as he sends Scott a pointed look. “The Stilinski girls are badasses.” Malia isn’t quite a Stilinski yet, but Scott is smart enough not to make that correction. He’s also smart enough to step back, giving Scott a wide berth as Malia moves into the room with purpose. She goes straight to the swing, unbuckling the baby and immediately pulling her free of the swing. “I told him not to do it,” Stiles says, his tone a little insistent in his need to absolve himself in his fiancee’s eyes. “But he kept insisting on trying to make her shift.”

Malia bares her teeth again as she sits down on the couch, legs folding beneath her. Her arms visibly tighten on the baby in her arm as she elicits another growl, and Stiles would be lying if he said he didn’t love her an insane amount in that moment.

But Scott, a braver man than him, shrugs. “It’s incredible that she can shift already. Don’t you want to see if she’ll do it again?”

“No,” Stiles and Malia say in perfect unison. Stiles crosses his arms over his chest as he focuses his gaze on his oldest friend. “We really don’t. That whole morning was traumatic for all three of us.”

Scott, at least, has the decency to look slightly sheepish again as Stiles turns his attention back to Malia. “I was just about to feed her,” he says as he holds up the bottle. He knows better than to point on the fact that she’s filling out her tank top in a way that looks uncomfortable, and Malia needs no invitation. Her hand immediately reaches around to unclasp her bra before she pulls up the hem of her tank, revealing her breast, which Ava latches onto immediately Stiles is aware of the fact that Scott is there, in the same way that he’s aware that there’s a romantic history there between his oldest friend and his soon-to-be wife, but he’s smart enough to know that they’re more like siblings at this point. And this is far from the first time Malia has nursed in front of Scott.

“So…” he says when she’s still silent, that same tension radiating from her as she feeds the baby. “Did you find a dress?”

[malia]

She won’t notice the change in the hierarchy until Stiles mentions it sometime later, but it’s definitely there. She’d never been scared of Scott. He’d always been a protector, her leader, her Alpha. She’d never been scared of him, but he was always the one in control. If he wanted her to do something, she had to do it. That was just the way it worked, it’s what made the pack function. But when it comes to Ava, she has no problem asserting some kind of dominance over him. If she had to choose between her alpha and her baby, her baby would win every time. That would never change.

She hears Stiles words, glaring at Scott as she goes to retrieve the baby. Ava lets her pacifier pop out of her mouth as soon as Malia has picked her up. She’s hungry. Malia would have gathered that before Stiles even had to tell her. Her own body inconveniently lets her know any time that it’s time for Ava to nurse and her body had given her that signal a while ago. It was one of the main reasons she was so frustrated by the time the day was over.

She settles on the couch, offering Scott one more warning growl and a firm no when brings it up. It had been traumatic, and she knew that until they had some kind of plan, neither she or Stiles wanted to experience it again. The full moon was just around the corner, and their time was running thin. And she can tell by what she walked back into today that they hadn’t made any progress in that matter.

She pulls her shirt up, undoing her nursing bra with one hand (she’s become an expert) and Ava doesn’t need any invitation. Her little mouth immediately finds Malia’s nipple and she sighs with relief as she immediately feels some of that pressure begin to dissipate. She leans down to press a kiss to Ava’s sweet smelling hair, some of the tension and frustration that had built up over the day immediately leaving her body as she looks back at Stiles when he speaks.

“No,” she tells him matter of factly. “And I’m not trying on one more.”

She had to find a dress, she knew that, but she wasn’t going to do it by going to another dress store with Melissa and Lydia. She’d rather be naked. She thinks that maybe she should tell Scott to apologize to his mom next time he sees her, but she’s more curious about what happened at the house while she was away. “Did you two come up with anything while I was gone?”

[stiles]

It’s like you can literally see the tension leave her body. Stiles’s eyes never leave her as he awaits the answer to his question. But Malia doesn’t even seem to notice as she closes her eyes and lets her head fall back against the back of the couch. She sighs in relief as her hand rubs the baby’s back, like Ava is an emotional support for her in that moment. The baby is calm, sucking greedily at Malia’s breast as she splays her little hand against her skin like a tiny stare. And Malia seems to be absorbing that calm the baby radiates, like there’s some kind of emotional tether that still connects the two of them now that they’re no longer physically connected.

There’s a lot of stressors Stiles feels responsible for bringing into her life, like the need to buy a wedding dress, but at least he can also claim responsibility for having helped to give her Ava.

Two long minutes pass before Malia finally lifts her head and opens her eyes to look at him again before she finally responds. Her voice is matter-of-fact, unbothered by the lack of success and resolute in her decision to be done, and Stiles feels a knot form in the pit of hist stomach. He makes a mental note to text Lydia later to find out just how bad it was. In his mind, there’s a flash of Malia baring her teeth and growling at a poor, unsuspecting salesgirl, but he physically shakes his head in an attempt to shake it away. Lydia had known to call in an emergency, so surely, the worst couldn’t have happened.

He has more questions about where they went, and how many dresses she tried on, and what she would wear on that day in the Preserve if she wasn’t going to try on another dress, but Malia shifts the topic. Her eyes are wide and hopeful as she looks between Scott and Stiles, and it makes his heart ache when he realizes he’ll have to be the one to take her hope away.

“So far, there’s nothing that won’t impact you,” Stiles sighs, rubbing at the back of his neck. Malia seems to deflate a little there on the couch, seeming smaller as her eyes dim.

”Wolfsbane would keep Ava from shifting,” Scott adds as he takes a seat in the chair across from Malia. ”But it’d keep you from shifting too. And according to Hannah, Ava’s the youngest baby to shift that the coyote packs know of.”

Stiles feels that same shiver down his spine, a mix of awe and fear at the abilities their daughter already has, that he felt when Scott first told him. That, too, he tries to shake away as he looks at Malia. “So no one really knows what to do for our overachiever,” he says with a nod towards Ava. “Derek thinks there might be some things we could test with wolfsbane to stop her shifting in public, but no one knows what to do about the full moon.” The pull was stronger then, Scott had explained earlier, and it would be much harder for Ava to fight.

[malia]

She really thinks she knows the answer to the question before she even asks it. She knows her fiancé, and she knows that if there had been some kind of development, not only would he have completely bombarded her as soon as she walked in the door, but there’s a really good chance he wouldn’t even have been able to contain himself and would have just called her while she was out anyways. There is none of that radiating excitement when she walks in the door, not from him or from Scott even though he was usually much more subtle. There’s only Scotts mischievous smile and Stiles curious gaze, wondering about the dress, of all things.

Which also makes sense, considering that’s why she’d been gone all day and their wedding date was approaching. These were the kind of mundane human things that she was pretty sure she would never be good at. She’d never enjoy shopping with the girls, or putting on make up, or going to the spa or whatever else it was that normal girls seemed to like to do in their free time.

So, there is no answer. Nothing that won’t affect her too. She sighs, thinking about that statement. Maybe, for Ava, she should put that concern aside. Maybe she should give up her own abilities to protect the baby. But then at the same time, how could she protect the baby, protect Stiles, protect the pack, if she couldn’t shift? If she lost her abilities, she lost her power, and if she lost her power, she lost her confidence. And then she couldn’t help anybody. She can’t lose her coyote. Not after it had been so much of who she was for so many years. Not when it’s the only thing she knows she has going for her in her fight to keep her family safe.

She looks down at the sweet, all human looking, baby in her arms when Stiles calls her an overachiever. She can’t help but smile sadly at that. Ava was going to do big things in her life, but she was still so small now. Too small to wear the burden and the weight of all that power she must have inside of her little body. The youngest any of them knew of to ever shift.

“There has to be something we can do about the full moon,” She mumbles, mostly to herself. She knows that Scott and Stiles have probably already discussed this for a good while before she’d gotten back. She looks over to her Alpha then, expecting him to have some kind of answer that she doesn’t have. “You’re her alpha. Maybe you can help control her? Help her control it?”

[stiles]

He wants to have a better answer for her. That was the whole purpose of all of the phone calls, and all of the searching, and all of the digging back through memories. But in the end, they’ve made little progress. Hannah’s pack has never had a baby who shifts. Derek’s relatives think Cora may have shifted the earliest, but even then, she was at least a toddler. And so far, there’s nothing on the internet about babies, but more information than he needed right now on what to do if you’re sending little weres to school (though most, it turns out, are homeschooled).

It’s a complicated mix of emotions he feels when Malia doesn’t push back on Stiles’s argument against wolfsbane. There’s a sense of pride because she’s putting herself first in this way and recognizing the fact that she needs to be able to shift. There’s an overwhelming sense of love, knowing that she’s also steadfast in her need to protect their family. And there’s a little bit of sorrow there, knowing she’s been put in this impossible situation. The only thing that could possibly keep their daughter from shifting is also the thing that would steal a part of her.

Stiles watches her as she stares down at the baby in her arms, brushing her fingers softly against Ava’s cheek while the baby nurses. The amount of love in her gaze, in her touch is nearly overwhelming to watch. And Stiles has to look away when she asks her question for Scott. They’ve already talked through this, enough times that Stiles had told Scott to stop saying Ava was too young to comprehend what was happening, and Scott had argued it didn’t make it less true.

“Well, yeah” Scott says, rubbing idly at the back of his neck. ”I am, but it was hard to control you during your first few full moons. And Ava’s just too young to get it. She won’t understand what’s happening or why it’s happening enough to control it, but she can be anchored. Stiles thinks you’re her anchor, right?”

“She is,” Stiles says resolutely before Malia can say anything. He finally lifts his gaze to meet hers again, seeing the worry there in her big brown eyes. “She’s definitely her anchor.” But that’s a weight, too, one only Malia can bear. He’ll be able to tap out during that full moon, to step away if it’s too hard to watch Ava suffer through that, but Malia won’t get that option. Stiles’s gaze drifts down to the baby again, watching as she eats contentedly without any knowledge of what awaits her in a week’s time. “What are the odds she just sleeps through the whole thing?”

[malia]

She was Ava’s anchor. If there had been any doubt about that fact, the morning of her first shift had proven it. Maybe it was just because she was Ava’s mother, because she had carried her inside of herself for 9 months. Or maybe it’s as just a supernatural bond that she could have had with anybody. But she looks up at Stiles as he answers for her, nodding as he speaks.

But just because she was Ava’s anchor didn’t mean she knew what to do to help a tiny little baby who didn’t understand what was happening to them get through her first full moon. Hell, half the time, she didn’t even know how she got through the full moons herself. All she can do at Stiles suggestion that maybe there’s a chance she’ll sleep through the entire thing is smile, laugh almost bitterly because she knows there’s no way that is going to be true. The pain would be too much, the feelings too intense. Even if she were passed out in the deepest sleep, the shift would wake her, and that might be even more scary than if it started when she was wide awake.

And almost as if Ava knows they’re talking about her, that these three people who love her more than anything are all together in a room trying to figure out how to keep her safe and keep her content, she pulls away from Malia’s breast. She gazes up at her with those wide eyes, and she smiles. She smiles up at Malia as she looks down at her more proud of her and more protective of her than anything else in her life.

And all Malia can do is laugh. It’s almost like Ava’s trying to tell her that it’s going to be okay even though Malia knows she has no idea what they’re talking about or what she’s feeling. “She smiled,” She says with a bit of wonder in her voice as she looks up at Stiles. She thinks it’s her first smile, at least the first one that she seems to have done on purpose. The first one that seems to actually be a reaction to one of them. “She smiled at me.”

She lifts Ava up, holding her so she can look at her closely and she smiles again, kicking her legs before Malia pulls her in for a kiss. She looks at Stiles again as she pats Ava’s back trying to get her to burp. Surely the fact that she chose this moment to smile is a coincidence, but it feels like so much more.

[stiles]

Malia laughs bitterly, and it’s only confirmation that he’s engaging in wishful thinking. It’s only then that he realizes he’d been holding onto the impossibility that they might put Ava down for the night and check on her to find that she was a tiny puppy again, curled up in her crib fast asleep. But he should’ve known it wasn’t possible when Derek had suggested sedating her for this first full moon. (Though, he had been distracted by how vehemently Malia argued against that option.) Really, he should’ve known before that when she described the way it felt to him, the pain and discomfort it would cause the baby to be forced into her other form. There truly is no easy way out.

Stiles sighs as he runs a hand through his hair. It was easier to get nowhere with Scott because with Scott, they were just hypothesizing, the same way they had done a thousand times before. But now it’s Malia who he’s relaying this to, the mother of his child, the person who will have to watch Ava suffer through that night. And all he wants is to have a better answer for her.

He’s so caught up in his own thoughts - his own angst, really - that it takes him a moment for her words to register. He expects her to add something else to the conversation about Ava’s shifting, so when she says instead She smiled, it’s like his brain has never heard those words before.

Malia looks up at him, her own face absolutely glowing with her own smile, and she says it again. “No, she didn’t,” he says automatically. “It’s probably gas.” Scott snorts across the room, but Stiles ignores him as he moves closer to Malia and the baby. He had been the one convinced she had smiled the first time, but Melissa had said that it was probably a reflex or gas, and she had been right. And right now, they could all use a lighter, friendlier first, so it makes sense Malia’s brain would play tricks on her.

Stiles sinks down onto the arm of the couch, tilting his head to find Ava’s face over Malia’s shoulder. “What do you think, Aves?” he asks her. “Was that a smile? Do you have a smile?” He smooths down her unruly dark hair as she stares at him. But instead of smiling again, she lets out a tiny burp that causes both he and Scott to laugh again. “It wasn’t a smile, Mal,” he argues again as Malia moves the baby into her arms, shifting her clothing to expose her other breast. She talks softly to the baby as she does it, telling her that her daddy is wrong, and as if she’s joining in on Malia’s amusement, Ava does it. Her tiny lips curl up to form a tiny smile. A genuine smile. One that feels purposeful as she stares up at her mom. “Well, shit,” he says softly, unable to stop the smile taking over his face. “That’s a smile.”

[malia]

If it had been any other time, maybe some other circumstances, she would have given him her best I told you, But this milestone seems to have come at such a needed time, she can’t bring herself to do it. So when Stiles finally agrees with her that, yes, it was most definitely a smile, all she can do is laugh again. Ava was beautiful. She was the most beautiful baby Malia had ever seen. In fact, she and Stiles had talked on several occasions about the fact that she was really the only beautiful baby they’d ever seen because babies in general looked so weird. But when Ava smiled…when their daughter smiled up at her with those sweet, soft eyes, she was more beautiful than anything Malia had ever seen in her life.

Ava gives them one more smile and a few excited leg kicks before she realizes that the rest of her meal is waiting for her and she immediately gets distracted by the milk being offered to her. She latches on again, almost instantly falling into a milk daze as she suckles greedily. Scott and Stiles go back to their table of notes while Ava eats, but as soon as he’s finished both of them are determined to make her smile again. Malia prefers this challenge to the one she’d walked in on when she came home from dress shopping. They fail, as Ava almost immediately falls asleep before they can get her attention. And as dinner time approaches, Scott tells them he has a date with Nat and he wants to go get ready. He promises that they’re going to keep looking until they find an answer for Ava’s shifting, but he just leaves all of his research there on the table with what Stiles had collected and he’s gone again without any real resolution.

Malia feels exhausted by the time Scott leaves, the long day of shopping and the impatience she had for the long day of shopping finally catching up with her. Stiles straightens up the mess that they’d left on the table and comes to sit down beside her and she can tell he wants to ask her something, but he just wraps his arms around her shoulders and pulls her closer, pressing a kiss to the side of her head.

“Are you going to say whatever you’re thinking?” She asks him teasingly, turning to meet his gaze. She knows he wants to know how the day went and she hadn’t really given him any details. Only because there really weren’t any to give. She doesn’t care about the dress. She just wants to marry him.

[stiles]

For the rest of Ava’s life, she’ll continue to amaze him as she learns skill after skill. Today, it’s her smile. His eyes grow glassy as he watches the tiny baby smile up at her mother, almost like she knows it’s what Malia, downtrodden from dress shopping and a lack of progress on the shifting front, needs more than anything else. Her tiny gray-blue eyes gleam as she kicks her little legs, the picture of happiness despite the uncertainty currently surrounding her existence. And it’s the reprieve they need. That little sliver of brightness in a day that has been otherwise despair worthy. At least, when considering both he and Malia have nothing to show for their efforts that day. But the baby doesn’t care. To Ava, her mother is worthy of her very first smile.

In a matter of seconds, Ava becomes distracted by her foodsource again. Stiles makes an off-color joke as the baby latches, and Malia punches him - hard - before he can pull away. He and Scott retreat back to the kitchen where their notes still cover the entirety of the table. Together, they both stare at mess of information that amounts to nothing before beginning to divide it up again, each taking a piece of the puzzle to investigate further. “I should get going,” Scott says as he collects the last of it, checking his phone for the time.

“To Nat’s?” Stiles asks with a smirk. In reality, he’s happy that his best friend seems to have found someone who makes him happy. But it hasn’t made it feel less weird to know that Scott is dating Malia’s midwife, nor has it taken away the novelty of ribbing Scott. But even as his oldest friend blushes, Stiles switches gears, growing more serious again. “Nate doesn’t know anything does she?”

Scott shakes his head sadly. “I already asked her, but she’s never had a patient mention anything. And she’s been an omega now for years.”

This is news to Stiles as he raises a brow, another piece of news to shelve for a time when his brain is less tired. “Really?” he asks instead before returning Scott’s smirk. “So how long until you make an honest woman out of her and invite her into your pack?”

Scott leaves quickly after that, waving to Malia on his way towards the door. And as much as he loves Scott, Stiles is grateful. As he closes the door behind him, it feels like he can put his worries and stress to rest, for now. The full moon looms just a week from now, but for today, he can let his tired mind rest.

Except that there’s something else nagging his mind. It’s not until he’s put his own notes away and rejoined his two favorite girls in the living room that he can name it. It worms its way into his thoughts as he sits down beside Malia, and he tries to distract himself by wrapping his arm around her and pressing a kiss to her temple, breathing her in in an attempt to calm his mind. But even Malia knows that he’s preoccupied.

When she asks her question, he studies her silently for a moment, pulling away enough to be able to look at her. “Do you need to apologize to anyone?” he asks. There’s no judgment in his voice, no reprimand or embarrassment or shame. It’s simply a question, and one that he’s asked before when she’s been put in an uncomfortable social situation he can’t be a part of. He could text Lydia to hear her side of the story of their dress shopping, but he’d rather hear it from Malia herself. “How bad was it?”

[malia]

Ava sleeps soundly in her swing in front of them and she moves closer to Stiles, the feel of his arm around her finally making her relax for maybe the first time that day. She hears his question but she doesn’t answer immediately. She focuses on Ava, watches as she makes that sweet sucking motion while she sleeps, surely dreaming about her last meal. But she has to think back about the day that had transpired before she got home. She’s as much frustrated with herself as she is at the entire situation. Why couldn’t she just be nice? Patient and pleasant and enjoyable to be around? These aren’t usually things that keep her up at night. She was who she was. She didn’t like bullshit. She didn’t like it from other people and she didn’t like to feel like she was serving it. She’d lived too hard and too much to put up with things like that. But then, she has to wonder why anybody wants to spend any time with her at all.

She’s disappointed in herself. But she also has no intention of changing, not that she even really knows how.

She sighs finally, pulling away so she can look him in the eyes. “Yeah, probably,” She tells him honestly. The girls had tried to be patient with her, but she could tell they were over it by the end of the day too. “There was just nothing good. And I hate taking my clothes off and putting them back on. And I don’t want to wear some frilly dress with itchy sequins on it.” The words tumble out of her mouth as she’s been holding them in all day. “But I probably took my frustration out on them. And I should tell them I’m sorry.”

Not to mention all of the employees at the stores that they’d spent time in, or the waiter at the restaurant they had lunch at, and countless other people that had crossed her path during the day at the wrong time.

“I don’t know why they want to be with me,” She mumbles. “I’m not a very good friend.”

[stiles]

Stiles watches Malia’s face as she worries her bottom lip, tracing the swing’s arc with her eyes. In his mind, he’s already thought through every worst case scenario. Luckily, the three women who had been her shopping partners love her unconditionally, and even if one or all of them need some space from Malia now, that will be temporary. There’s a possibility his fiancee has now been banned from multiple boutiques in the San Francisco area, but they can go fuck themselves for all he cares if that’s the case. He wonders if they now own multiple sample dresses that fell victim to Malia’s claws. But even that doesn’t raise his blood pressure, mostly because there’s a number in their shared bank account now that he still can’t fathom. (A number that left him lightheaded and with his head between his knees the first time he saw it.)

But the longer he sits there, waiting to hear about her day, the more he realizes that his worst case scenario isn’t any of those things. It’s the thought of her alone in a fitting room, frustrated and angry, with no one on the other side of the door who understands her in the way he does.

It’s her resenting him for wanting to marry her.

When she finally does talk, her words come slowly and then all at once so he has to really focus to catch each one. He scoffs when she says she doesn’t like taking her clothes off, but he doesn’t want to interrupt her for fear she’ll stop talking. But when she mentions her frustration with what she tried on, he can’t help himself. “Why would you try on anything with sequins?” He’s thought about this day a lot at this point, and never once has she not looked like herself. Anything with lace or sequins would seem like a costume on her. Stiles can feel himself growing frustrated on her behalf at whoever thought a dress like that was a good idea for her.

At least, he feels his frustration growing until her gaze drops down to her lap and she murmurs that last statement like maybe he won’t hear it.

“Mal, you’re a great friend,” he says immediately as he wraps his arm around her and pulls her into his arms again. He presses a kiss to her temple, pausing to collect his thoughts before he says anything else. It’s heartbreaking to hear the way she criticizes herself, and he doesn’t want to misstep this conversation. “You just… You missed out on eight years when the rest of us were figuring out how to be humans. And considering that, you’re incredible. My ex-girlfriend went wedding dress shopping with you,” he adds, running his hand down her arm. “That doesn’t sound like something you do for a bad friend.”

[malia]

His arms are like a shelter for her, ands he does feel more at home, more comforted when he pulls her tighter. She’s not sure if it’s the familiarity of him, or the fact that there’s no doubt in her mind about how much he loves her, or if it’s his scent or his chemo signals, or if it’s just…him. He was her anchor, but he was also the only person who could calm her down when she was upset, or talk reason into her when she was pissed off. It had always been him. She doesn’t expect him to have any answers. She knows she didn’t treat anyone very nicely today, and she knows she’ll never be “one of the girls.” But somehow, what he says DOES comfort her somehow. Now that it’s all so far behind her, it’s easy to forget sometimes that she did spend the majority of her developing years alone in the woods, learning a different kind of social hierarchy. A different kind of friendship. It would always and forever influence who she was.

His last statement draws a slight laugh from her. She never fully forgets the relationship that Stiles had with Lydia, but it’s never the first thing she thinks about either. She thinks, of all the girls, Lydia is probably the one she’s closest to. Lydia seemed to understand her too, and she never expected any more of her than what she had to offer. And even today, she hadn’t seemed frustrated. She definitely owed her an apology. She makes a mental note to text all three of the women she was with today later, when they’ve all had a little space between them and the day.

She pulls her head away from his chest so she can look him in the eye. “I love you,” She says matter of factly. “I love you and you’re the only person in the world I would do this stuff for you know?” She wanted to give him the wedding he deserved. She didn’t think about make up or fashion or any of that stuff very often, but she wanted to be a beautiful bride. She wanted to make him proud. And she wanted to make sure he didn’t second guess what he was doing…having this future with her.

“I want to be beautiful when we get married,” She tells him honestly. “And none of those dresses made me feel very beautiful.”

[stiles]

“I love you too,” Stiles responds without hesitation. But it’s as she continues to talk that he feels a sense of unease settle in the pit of his stomach. He likes to think that he knows Malia better than anyone else. They’ve only been back together for a year now, but they’ve achieved a level of intimacy in that time that he’s never felt with anyone else. But still, even now, it’s hard for him to sometimes remember that they can want the same things in very different ways. Stiles always saw his future containing an engagement, a wedding, a career, children. And Malia called him her mate before she called him anything else. She spent all of her adolescence in the body of a coyote. While Lydia had created pinterest board after pinterest board of her future home and the wedding of her dreams, Malia had been trying to play catchup, mastering daily tasks they had all committed to memory years ago.

The logical step for him had been a wedding after she said yes to his proposal. But what if that wasn’t what she wanted?

He pulls away from her so that he can see her face better, but there must be something on his face or in his chemosignals because she moves like a moth drawn to a flame. She climbs onto his lap, moving to straddle to him so her thighs are pressed to either side of his. Her hands are soft against his face when she takes it into her hands, her thumbs moving over his cheekbones. And when her brows furrow, there’s a split second when he thinks the way she looks when she’s worried might be his top reason for marrying her.

“You will be beautiful,” he says sincerely. His own hands rest on her waist, thumbs running over the strip of bare skin between her tank top and her cutoffs. “It won’t matter what you wear. But Mal…”

He stops, sighs. Her hands tighten on his face, like that can force his thoughts together faster. “We don’t have to have a wedding,” he finally says. “I know Lydia keeps talking about color schemes and floral arrangements and we set a date. But I don’t want you to do this for me. We could get married at the courthouse for all I care. I just want to be married to you. That’s all I want.”