Teen Wolf Fic: Come A Little Closer (If You Dare) (1/2, Isaac/Danny, PG-13)
Come A Little Closer (If You Dare) - Teen Wolf - Isaac Lahey/Danny Mahealani - Words: 12,790
Written for Teen Wolf Bingo, Prompt/Pairing: Angst - Danny/Isaac
Summary: Danny's three point summer plan - get a new tan, a new boyfriend, and a new computer - was abruptly changed when he learned about the existence of werewolves. Danny's new three point summer plan: stay alive, learn how to fire a gun, and find out more about the skinny werewolf with curly hair.
Content Notes: Canon typical violence, discussion of child abuse, discussion of mental illness, discussion of sexuality and homophobia. PG-13.
On AO3: Come A Little Closer (If You Dare)
On DW: Come A Little Closer (If You Dare)
Some nights Danny wondered if when he looked back at his time in high school if he'd remember this as the summer when he found out werewolves are real, or maybe even as the summer when he accidentally became an auxiliary member of the local werewolf pack. He had always planned on leaving Beacon Hills after he graduated high school; go to the east coast to attend the university of his choice and then settle in somewhere and do something revolutionary. That future seemed a little more unlikely than it had only a few weeks earlier, when he'd been only vaguely aware that some messed up shit was going down in the town and the school but had never made the leap to werewolves. Because, really, what sane person's first assumption was werewolves - except for Stilinski, who didn't exactly count as sane. Then again, Danny wasn't so sure he counted as sane anymore either.
The werewolves themselves were a little rough around the edges, wild and maybe even feral, but after Danny spent a month trying to stay alive while they weathered the attacks by the Alpha Pack he thought he understood why. There was something about standing in the woods in the dead of night - soaked in blood that wasn't all your own, holding an empty gun because at the very least it could be used as a blunt object and it was better than nothing at all - that changed a person, and not necessarily for the better.
Maybe it was because Danny had spent the last semester watching rest of the pack changing without understanding why that gave him the distance to see how they'd become different people in such a short space of time. Sure, their core personality attributes were still there, but never before would he have imagined watching Stilinski empty a gun into a man without flinching, Jackson turning back to pull a wounded pack member to safety without concern for his own welfare, or McCall using his claws to tear out the throat of an enemy without being bothered by the blood staining his hands. They had all changed from being regular high school students, Lydia and Allison included, and Danny knew he wasn't exempt from the conditioning that was turning him into something else. Human wasn't necessarily an indicator of normality any longer, and when Danny found himself staring out at the dancing bodies in the club without feeling anything except a pull to return to the pack he set aside his untouched drink and walked out.
As he drove across town he had the sneaking suspicion that when he'd pressed to find out what the hell was happening after Jackson miraculously rose from the dead he'd gotten himself involved in something that would redefine his life - and not just in that now when he watches Buffy and Supernatural he takes notes. There weren't any cars in the lot outside the abandoned train depot when he parked, but that doesn't mean there wasn't anyone around. The werewolves often came and went on foot - on paws? - and Danny had grown accustomed to Jackson appearing out of nowhere. Apparently as fun as the Porsche was, running at superhuman speeds was better. A few months ago the only reason Danny would have even thought to come out to the dying industrial section of town would have been for the occasional raves and underground parties. Now, walking down the steps into the dank and filthy train depot was as natural as coming home after school.
There was only one light on and Danny stepped out onto the cracked concrete floor with an itch in his fingers that made him wish for the safety of a gun in his hands. His guns, a pair of Smith and Wessons along with an assortment of wolfsbane bullets, were stored safely in the trunk of his car mostly because with the pants and shirt he's wearing there was no place for concealment. Danny didn't typically come into places the pack inhabited armed, though after the Alpha Pack fiasco Derek didn't object to the humans associated with the pack being armed to take down werewolves.
Danny edged around the puddle of light from the lamp that was run off the small generator they'd gotten running, moving as silently as possible as he identified the lone figure sitting in the light. It was Isaac, his chin tilted slightly up and his gaze unseeing as he stared out into the darkness that engulfed the rest of the train depot. The humans all knew better than to startle a werewolf, though given their enhanced senses it was rarely an issue, and Danny stepped slowly so that he was in Isaac's range of vision.
"Isaac? Are you okay?" Danny asked. There wasn't a place where he could be in the train depot and still be out of range if Isaac decided to attack, so he took a step closer. Isaac gave no indication that he was aware of Danny's presence and continued to sit almost frighteningly still. Within a few minutes Danny had approached so that he within a few feet of Isaac and he sat down.
"Isaac?" Danny asked again, his voice heavy with worry now. He knew Isaac about as well as he did most of the other werewolves in the pack; he knew them in passing as classmates and teammates and he'd shared the occasional meal and the slightly more frequent battle with them. Isaac had never been overly social with Danny, or with anyone outside of the core set of wolves that made up the pack, but Danny had found himself watching Isaac on more than one occasion. Most of the time Isaac would stand near Derek, his attention and movements attuned to the Alpha like an orchestra member to the conductor, but occasionally Isaac would stand to the side and seem to disappear into himself while the pack discussed the latest disaster.
Never before had Danny seen Isaac - or any of the werewolves - sit so rigidly and without awareness of his surroundings. There was a fine line of difference between a cataleptic and a catatonic state, a difference Danny could remember two months ago when he'd been taking his Advanced Placement Psychology exam, but at the moment all he could do was worry over how rigid Isaac's body was and how he could see the muscles in Isaac's arms standing out. He considered texting Derek, letting him know that something was wrong with one of the beta wolves, but footsteps on the stairs proved that unnecessary.
"What's wrong with him?" Danny asked, not having to turn to know it was Derek. The werewolves like to play with that, knowing who was at the door or carrying on conversations from rooms away, but that didn't mean Danny couldn't hold his own. His range was more limited, but that didn't mean he couldn't pay attention to the way people walked and held themselves, the way they breathed and they shifted.
"Nothing," Derek answered after a moment. "There's nothing wrong with him."
Danny turned and looked at Derek then. Werewolves also had a leg up on lie detecting, but again that didn't mean that Danny was stupid. "A werewolf thing or something else?" he asked. Jackson did that too, outright denial when he didn't want to think about something, and Danny had learned to push when it was important - like with werewolves and how the hell Jackson had died and come back to life.
"Something else," Derek admitted after a moment, frowning down at where Danny was sitting next to Isaac. "He comes out of it after a while. Just don't touch him."
"What happens if I touch him?" Danny asked. He hadn't been planning on it but obviously this wasn't the first time this had happened and Danny wanted to know more. Like he'd told Stiles and Scott when the whole werewolf thing had finally come out, the more information they could put together the better change they had a seeing patterns and coming up with solutions before people died or turned into lizards or whatever.
Derek sighed. "Sometimes nothing. Sometimes when I try to move him, he won't even respond. Sometimes he attacks. His claws don't do much harm to me, but you won't heal as easily."
Danny knew that much from experience; he had a set of still healing claw marks around his ankle from where he'd been grabbed and dragged across the forest floor by one of the Alpha Pack. The only reason he was still alive was because Allison was a really excellent shot with a crossbow and hadn't hesitated in aiming for the Alpha's head. "Why?" The question could be interpreted a lot of ways and Danny was just as interested in Derek's interpretation as he was in the answer.
"He's a member of my pack. I bit him," Derek replied - an evasion if Danny had ever heard one. "Will you stay a little longer? I was going to get dinner but I don't want to leave him alone in case someone shows up." Someone probably covered anyone from Hunters to cops to Peter Hale.
"I can stay," Danny said without looking at the time. His parents were used to him staying out late in the summer and they didn't ask many questions about where he'd been. They either thought they already knew or they didn't want to know about what Danny was doing with his nights. Danny would bet anything that werewolves had never crossed their minds.
Derek left without responding and Danny considered Isaac for a long handful of minutes, trying to organize his memories of Isaac as much as possible. He had vague flashes of Isaac on the lacrosse field and leaning against the lockers while the coach talked, and a sudden switch from overlarge hoodies to leather jackets with an attitude adjustment to match. There was something else, but try as he might Danny couldn't figure out what he was missing. Isaac still hadn't moved by the time Derek returned with a bag of takeout and Danny watched as Derek opened the cartons of Chinese and set them out one of the rough surfaces that passes as a table. Danny knew exactly how much food werewolves tended to consume and how without exception they threw themselves into eating with enthusiasm. Even Jackson, who had been ridiculously obsessive about what he ate, now ate whatever was within reach. Isaac didn't stir at the aroma of food, which must have been more intense for him than it was for Danny, and Danny's own stomach rumbled at the scent of chicken chow mein.
There was the hint of a smirk pulling at the corners of Derek's mouth as he passed over a carton and a pair of chop sticks without a word, and Danny took it. He wasn't about to object if Derek was going to feed him and they ate their late night meal in silence in the somewhat dank and dark not-so-abandoned train depot.
Derek stood and dusted off his pants, gathering the trash into a bag and putting the remaining food into a battered blue cooler. "You should go, it's late."
Danny pushed himself to his feet. "What about Isaac?" When Derek only raised his eyebrows in response, Danny sighed - it was uncanny how alike Derek and Jackson were when they were being stubborn and obtuse on purpose. "Will he be okay?"
"He's fine," Derek said, his jaw tightening in a way that Danny had already learned meant the end of discussion on a topic. Usually that was right before Derek walked out of a meeting and Danny was smart enough to know when to stop pushing an issue before claws and fangs made an appearance.
"Goodnight," Danny said, walking away toward the stairs. He looked back when he reached the first step and watched as Derek picked up Isaac and carried him into the subway car. Isaac didn't protest to being picked up by under his arms, or even react, and his body remained in the same stiff position as Derek set him down on the mattress at the back of the subway car. Danny shivered and hurried up the stairs and out to his car, disturbed for reasons he couldn't quite name.
His sleep was uneasy that night, and not because he was waiting for a member of the Alpha Pack to show up at his window or remembering the sound of growls and gunfire echoing in the woods. In the morning, as he ate breakfast with his parents and his brother Nathan who was home for the summer, he caught his mom and dad exchanging significant glances. Neither of them said anything about Danny coming home in the middle of the night and his mom just waved and told him to be home for dinner when Danny said that he was going to go meet up with Jackson.
Twenty minutes later he was at the meet up spot in the woods, the same place they went most days for training, and Isaac was gathered with the rest of the beta wolves as they considered the training course Derek and Stiles had set up for them. The wolves took off at Derek's command, Stiles, Allison, and Lydia gathering their gear as they got set to take their positions as fake Hunters and distractions, and Danny had a brief moment where he wondered if the previous night had happened at all.
"Danny, let's go," Lydia called, holding a quiver of arrows in his direction.
Danny accepted the quiver and the bow without argument - he'd only been learning to shoot for the past few weeks and knew that the chances of him actually hitting any of the wolves were pretty low. For this task that was okay, they were mostly there to provide people to dodge from and Stiles had been extremely apologetic last week when he'd caught Boyd in the calf with an arrow. The rest of them had just been surprised considering Stiles was fairly proficient with a gun but still struggled with basic bow skills.
From his perch in a tree Danny watched as the betas came tearing through the foliage, neatly dodging the volley of arrows he and Lydia were sending their way. Isaac leapt and bounded as nimbly as the other werewolves, dropping to his hands as he took a sharp corner and Danny stared at the now empty space where Isaac had just been. The trees stopped rustling as the woods returned to the near quiet that followed a pack of wolves racing through and Danny dropped back to the ground struck with the mental image of Isaac frozen in place with Hunters watching from the trees.
*****
"Do you mind?" Danny asked, barely catching the bottle of imported beer that Jackson had tossed at him. Jackson didn't see anything wrong with using his enhanced werewolf strength for day-to-day tasks and Danny could already foresee that lacrosse next year was going to be more violent than usual. And given that it was lacrosse, that was saying something.
Jackson settled into the lounge chair next to Danny's and fussed with the label on his own bottle of beer before responding. "I brought you a beer instead of making you get your lazy ass up to go get it, what more do you want?" he asked with hardly a glance in Danny's direction as he considered his long bare legs stretched out in front of him.
Danny was reasonably certain that Jackson and Erica had tagged along with Lydia the last time she'd gone to get a pedicure - there was something exceedingly odd about werewolves with neatly manicured feet. Maybe even odder than the fact that it was his best friend who was one of the werewolves in question. He quickly returned his eyes to Jackson's expansive backyard, not wanting to seem like he was checking out Jackson's legs. Danny was pretty sure the only reason Jackson still occasionally hit on him was because Danny turned him down each time without fail. It wasn't that Jackson wasn't attractive but when they were fifteen Danny had stuck to his guns about not being Jackson's gay experiment and ruining their friendship as a result. Instead he'd taken Jackson down to the local club, kept an eye out while Jackson made out with a variety of guys, and had rolled his eyes when Jackson had proclaimed "Guys are alright, but I prefer someone with breasts".
"Out with it," Jackson said, drawing Danny from his thoughts.
"What?" Danny asked, looking over to find Jackson watching him with an expression of smug contemplation.
Jackson rolled his eyes. "Who is it this time? You only stop checking me out when you have the hots for someone, so spill.
"I don't," Danny said, waving his free hand in a gesture as casual as he could make it.
"You realize that I can literally hear your heartbeat speed up when you lie?" Jackson smirked and then frowned suddenly. "Just tell me it's not Stilinski or McCall. I have to hang out with those losers enough as it is without you dating one of them too."
It was Danny's turn to roll his eyes and sigh. "It's not Stilinski or McCall," he said before he quickly occupied his mouth with his bottle of beer. Not that he would have anything against going out with either of them, but McCall lived and breathed for Allison Argent and Stilinski was still stumbling his way out of the bi-sexual closet.
"Uh huh," Jackson said thoughtfully. "Which means it's one of the pack, because you haven't smelled like a club for weeks now."
"You know it's really creepy to essentially stalk me by using my scent and heartbeat, right?" Danny asked. He briefly considered cautioning Jackson against pulling that on Lydia but he kind of wanted to see if she'd stick Jackson in a literal dog house now that he fit the bill.
Jackson was undeterred. "Not Boyd - you don't steal people's boyfriends even though you totally could. Derek is hot, in that scary-sexy way, but I think you might be out of luck there. I'm pretty sure Derek doesn't date - the most you could probably hope for is a rough fuck against his Camaro."
Danny took a second to push that mental image out of his head because it was somehow thrilling and terrifying at the same time. Though, it was interesting that Jackson had been the one to suggest that Derek was scary-sexy and Danny had a sudden flash of insight into Jackson's bizarre reactions to Derek. "Not Derek," he said finally, setting aside his half empty bottle and staring resolutely into the darkening sky.
"Isaac," Jackson said suddenly and Danny's slight jolt was the only answer either of them needed. "Could be worse, I guess. He's kind of attractive. Tall."
Danny's lips parted in shock and he shifted so that he could see Jackson. Jackson had never approved of anyone Danny had dated, or had even talked about liking. In retrospect, Damian had been a totally douche just like Jackson had said, but at the time Danny had thought that Jackson was just jealous of anyone who Danny expressed interest in. From Jackson "could be worse" was practically an enthusiastic blessing.
He sighed and scratched the back of his neck. "Doesn't really matter, does it," he said, because once again he'd fallen for someone he stood no chance with. He had spent the last two weeks watching Isaac and by the time he realized that he was waiting to catch Isaac's small smiles it was too late. "He probably doesn't even like guys."
"He'd be stupid not to want you," Jackson said with a nod. "That's not going to be a problem."
Danny shook his head and let his hand find his beer again, watching stars pop into place in the night sky. Jackson was a pain in the ass sometimes but he was a good friend.
*****
Jackson was the worst friend. Ever. In the history of friends.
"Which is why making out with guys is not as bad of an idea as it seems at first," Jackson concluded with a nod. "Really, you should give it a try sometime."
Danny gave a silent prayer that the floor of the woods would open up and swallow him whole. Jackson had spent the last ten minutes as they walked the southeastern edge of the Hale Pack borders to re-mark the territory lines by scent explaining about how he was attracted to some guys and how their strong hands were really fantastic in the right circumstances; Danny had spent the last ten minutes looking as far away from Isaac as he possibly could. If this was Jackson's idea of subtly finding out if Isaac was at all interested in guys, well Danny was going to have to give Jackson a firm re-education on what subtle meant.
"What about you?" Jackson asked Isaac, his voice loud in the mid-morning woods. "Would you make out with a guy?"
Danny was going to murder Jackson, it was now officially on his to-do list, but even so he couldn't help but glance over to where Isaac was lagging slightly behind.
Isaac's gaze was directed down and either he'd picked up a light sunburn or he was blushing. "I," he paused and looked over, neatly avoiding Danny's gaze, "I would. If it was the right guy."
The worst part was that both Isaac and Jackson could probably hear the little jump his heart gave at learning that Isaac wasn't exclusively heterosexual. Of course, the right guy didn't necessarily mean Danny, but at least he wasn't out of the running entirely.
"Didn't think you would be," Jackson said with a knowing smile in Danny's direction. "Hey, I'm going to run ahead, I've got things to do today. Isaac, you'll stay with Danny, right? Make sure he gets out of the woods in one piece?"
Isaac had barely finished saying "sure" when Jackson gave Danny a barely discrete thumbs up and a not-at-all discrete wink before he dashed off into the woods on all fours.
"I'm going to kill him," Danny said faintly; it was the first thing he'd said out loud in at least fifteen minutes.
"Well, refreshing the territory lines isn't exactly the most glamorous task," Isaac said as he traced his hand along the trunk of a nearby tree.
They didn't really have to touch things as they went, just passing through would leave enough scent to declare that Beacon Hills belonged to the Hales, but every werewolf Danny had gone with on this task had almost absently touched anything within reach of their path. "Sorry about, you know," Danny said finally, deciding it was more awkward to leave Jackson's little speech unmentioned than it was to just deal with it.
Isaac shrugged and turned around so that he was walking backward and facing Danny. "No big deal. Erica and Stiles go off on the weirdest tangents sometimes. The other day Stiles spent twenty minutes telling me about the benefits and drawbacks of socks. You kind of get used to it when you hang out with the pack."
Danny let out a slow breath, trying to decide if that meant Isaac had actually been blissfully unaware of Jackson's true purpose behind his little speech. Unfortunately Isaac dashed any hopes of that a moment later.
"You never know though, who someone likes, until you ask. Right?" Isaac asked, waiting for Danny to nod. "You mostly like guys, yeah?"
"Yeah," Danny said, his throat feeling a little dry. "Sometimes I think a girl is attractive, but I still don't really want to do anything with her."
Isaac nodded thoughtfully. "I've liked girls, but I've never really done anything about it."
"And guys?" Danny asked, hoping that his heartbeat wasn't as loud to Isaac as it felt to him.
"I've liked a few guys. The way they look, sometimes, or how they move. How they act. Never really done anything about that either," Isaac admitted, twisting around so he was facing forward again. "Not really sure what to do about that."
"Yeah," Danny agreed again, mentally face-palming and begging his mind to come out with something that actually might indicate that he liked Isaac without being utterly stupid about it. "Do you want to go get something to drink when we're done here? There's a coffee shop that's not too far from the edge of town, they make these really incredible danishes and we could talk, or something." He trailed off a little bit by the end, but for the most part when he played it back in his head it didn't sound too terrible.
Isaac looked back over his shoulder, seeming to consider Danny for a moment. "Yeah, okay. That sounds good."
"Great," Danny said. He smiled - watching the corners of Isaac's mouth pull up in the brightest smile he had seen from Isaac so far - and he considered killing Jackson slightly less when he got his hands on him.
*****
Over the next two weeks Danny made a concentrated effort to spend more time with Isaac. He sat near him when the whole pack was hanging out and volunteered for tasks that would get them sent places together. The first time Danny had volunteered to walk the western ridge to look for indications that Hunters had been through the woods recently - right after Isaac had been assigned the task - Derek had fixed him with a long stare before nodding and sending them on their way without a third in their group.
If Danny noticed that Isaac had started to gravitate towards him when they hung out as a pack, well, he tried not to read too much into it. Being friends with Isaac wouldn't be a bad thing and while Danny was popular at school he wasn't really close with many people. He and Isaac spent a lot their time together talking about werewolves and the insanity that had invaded their lives, but also about mundane things like the classes they hated the most and lacrosse. It was nice to have people - werewolves - to spent time with, and making a tentative connection with Isaac only reinforced how alone Danny had felt those last few weeks of the school year.
The more Danny learned about Isaac, the more he was intrigued. Isaac had a dry sense of humor that it took Danny a while to get, and he found himself grinning when Isaac would make a quiet joke disguised as a comment that no one else seemed to understand. Isaac wasn't looking forward to going back to school in the fall at all and didn't have any firm plans about college or what he was going to do after he graduated. Isaac preferred Spiderman to Batman but would pick the comics of either over the movies any day.
Danny collected these tidbits about Isaac and shared his own in return, telling Isaac about the computer programming that he did, and why goalie was his favorite position on the field, and about his parents and how he knew they cared but they never really seemed to see him. Isaac listened and asked questions and generally seemed interested, except for when Danny started talking about family. The first time Isaac quickly changed the subject, Danny had shrugged it off and followed Isaac to check on some tracks he'd seen in the dirt, but it didn't take long to realize that Isaac shied away from the topic every time Danny brought it up.
"Do you want me to drop you at home after you pick up your stuff?" Danny asked as he drove Isaac back to the train depot. It was late, past midnight, but they were one night past the full moon and no one was dead; Danny was going to call it a win. They all looked a little worse for wear and Isaac had been half asleep in the passenger seat while Danny drove. At least he had been until Danny had spoken, now his eyes were wide open even though he was studiously examining his hands instead of looking at Danny.
"I live with Derek," Isaac said after a long moment of uncomfortable silence.
"Oh," Danny said. He'd seen Isaac stay the night in the train depot, just as he'd seen all of the werewolves camp down there on occasion, and had thought that Isaac had simply preferred to be with the pack during the summer. "Okay," he added after a moment, hoping that Isaac would clarify why he lived with Derek.
Isaac scrambled out of Danny's car and hurried to the entrance of the train depot as soon as Danny reached the parking lot, the passenger door closing before Danny could even say goodbye.
"Goodnight," he said to the empty space, hoping that Isaac was listening. "I'll see you tomorrow."
By the time Danny parked his car in the driveway he had a sinking realization that he knew something about Isaac that he hadn't been told, something from before he'd ever really even known Isaac. A quick search of the local news in the last year provided the details almost immediately: Isaac's dad had been murdered in the late winter. Danny remembered that now, the rumors that had cropped up for a few weeks about how Isaac had murdered his dad and had been taken away by the police and was a fugitive. At the time Danny remembered thinking it was pretty tasteless for the lacrosse team to make jokes about that, considering that Isaac was on the lacrosse team, but overall he hadn't paid too much attention and people found something else to talk about soon enough.
Danny clicked on the article out of reflex and felt his stomach sink at the description of the murder. Mysterious circumstances, the body being practically ripped apart, no firm leads on how the murder had been committed - before the start of the summer it would have just seemed weird. Now it practically screamed werewolves. Danny weighed that in his mind for a moment, remembering how vicious the werewolves had been in the nights leading up to the full moon and how they had bit and scratched each other until there was blood mixing with the dirt of the forest. He checked the date of the murder, and then a full moon chart for the year; it was like adding two and two and getting four, and Danny sat for a long time with the conclusion that he'd reached.
*****
Danny stood near Scott and Stiles the next time Derek divided them into groups to sweep the woods for signs of Hunters. Derek seemed to understand his request without having to be asked; he grouped Isaac, Erica, and Boyd together first and left Scott, Stiles, and Danny to the end to make it look like they were just the last available trio. It wasn't without a suspicious glance though and Danny met his gaze steadily. True, this was probably something Danny should just ask Isaac outright but "did you kill your father?" was a pretty awful question to ask someone.
Danny followed Stiles and Scott out to Stiles' jeep and they set off down the road. It took fifteen minutes to drive to the other side of the nature preserve and Stiles chatted to Scott about something or another the whole way there. Danny barely noticed, asking himself for the dozenth time if this was something he really needed to know. He could picture it in his mind, Isaac leaping too quickly to be seen, his claws slashing through his father's stomach and his teeth tearing through the soft skin of his throat. Having watched one of the Alpha Pack kill a Hunter in the exact same way probably hadn't helped Danny's imagination in this regard.
"So, what's shaking?" Stiles asked once they were well into the woods.
"What?" Danny asked as soon as he realized Stiles was speaking to him and not Scott.
Stiles exchanged glances with Scott. "Well, usually you go with Jackson or Isaac, so we figured that meant you had something you wanted to ask us," Stiles explained, Scott nodding along.
Danny had picked to go along with Scott and Stiles for a few reasons. They were the ones who had been involved with werewolves the longest - except for Derek - and were the most likely to know the truth. They were also the most likely to tell him the truth if he asked. "Did Isaac kill his father?" Danny asked, forcing the words past the lump in his throat.
Scott jolted to a stop and stared at Danny while Stiles tripped over an exposed tree root. Once Stiles was back on his feet he stared at Danny too.
"I know he wouldn't have meant to do it. It was probably right after he'd been bitten, right?" Danny reasoned. He had seen Jackson lose control a few days ago; Jackson had only stopped once Derek had dragged him away from the pack and growled so loud it seemed to shake the very earth around them. If Derek hadn't been around when Isaac lost control it was easy to see how it could have happened.
"It was shortly after Isaac was bitten," Scott said slowly as if weighing his words, "but Isaac didn't kill his father."
Danny frowned and tried to rewrite his mental scenario of what had happened. "Then who did? From the coroner's report it didn't look like anything a human would do unless they were consciously emulating a werewolf."
"You hacked the coroner's database?" Stiles asked, sounding somewhere between scandalized and impressed.
Danny shrugged; he had actually hacked into the Sheriff Department's database, but he probably shouldn't tell Stiles that.
"It was Jackson," Scott said and motioned to them to keep walking through the woods. "Well, Jackson as the Kanima."
"Well, more like it was Matt using Jackson as a murder weapon," Stiles added. "Jackson didn't really have any say in who he was killing."
Jackson had explained to Danny a little bit about being something else for a while before he became a werewolf, but he had refused the elaborate any further than the fact that he hadn't been in control and that's why he'd been acting so weird during the Spring. Jackson hadn't said anything about being used as a murder weapon, but it actually explained a fair amount about Jackson's behavior the past few months.
Danny resolved to keep an eye on Jackson in general - being there for Jackson usually meant keeping him from becoming overtly self destructive since having a heart-to-heart conversation with him was typically counterproductive. Though, maybe he would have to revisit the 'hey, you know you can tell me things' conversation with Jackson. "Matt? With the camera? Who killed himself a few weeks before the lacrosse championship?" Danny asked, not quite daring not to believe what he was being told after everything he'd seen recently.
"A Hunter killed him in order to gain control over Jackson, but other than that, yes, that Matt." Stiles scowled and then muttered, "freaking psychopath."
"But why would Matt want to kill Isaac's dad? Or anyone at all?" Danny asked as he tried to reason it all out. He knew that Matt had been implicated in the murders but he'd never realized that the werewolf population of the town had anything to do with it.
Stiles and Scott were giving each other significant looks again, but it was Scott who finally spoke. "You like Isaac, right? You guys are going out?"
Danny wasn't sure that they were 'going out' just yet, but he was definitely interested. "I like him," he said, suddenly realizing that this was actually easier with Jackson, when Jackson had just assumed and Danny never had to say it out loud.
"Then you should probably know that Isaac's dad wasn't the nicest guy out there. Matt killed Mr. Lahey because after Isaac's older brother and some other kids almost drowned Matt, Mr. Lahey threatened him to keep quiet about it," Stiles explained, his mouth twisting with distaste.
"Oh," Danny said faintly, trying to work his mind around that.
"He was hurting Isaac," Scott said abruptly. "Like, really hurting him. There was a freezer in their basement and he would lock Isaac inside to punish him. I saw the freezer."
Danny felt his chest constrict suddenly and almost wished they'd just told him that Isaac had lost control before the full moon and had accidentally killed his father. That would have been easier to hear. Even though it was mid-summer and the heat had worked its way through the trees to the floor of the woods, Danny felt chilled and heartsick.
"We probably should have let Isaac tell you that, but pretty much everyone else knows," Stiles said and then sighed. "But, basically, this is us trying to tell you that if you're not actually interested in Isaac you should probably back off. The last thing we need is another emotionally distraught werewolf running around this town. And, Derek will possibly kill you if you mess around with one of his pack."
"What Stiles is trying to say is that Isaac's our friend," Scott glared when Stiles huffed and shook his head slightly, "and we don't want to see him get hurt."
"Right," Danny said, running a hand through his hair as he looked out at the trees surrounding them. A five minute walk through the woods was really not enough time to process everything from 'your best friend was being used as a murder weapon' to 'the guy you like was abused by his father'. "Does this whole werewolf thing get any easier?" Danny asked after a another minute or two.
"Not really," Stiles said at the exact same time that Scott said, "Kind of." They stared at each other, visibly surprised by each other's answers.
Danny laughed, mostly because if he didn't he was probably just going to sit down at the base of a tree and not get back up again for a while. "I'll keep that in mind."
"Things are actually pretty good right now," Stiles said. "No one has tried to kill us in, what, two weeks? Must be a record."
Danny was about to reply that it hadn't quite been two full weeks since the last time they'd been shot at but Scott stopped suddenly and threw out his hands.
"Don't move, either of you," Scott instructed.
Stiles and Danny froze and looked around slowly for whatever had put Scott on alert. "Scott, whatcha doing?" Stiles asked when Scott started carefully edging to the side.
Scott didn't reply, following something only he could sense, and a moment later a loud metallic click caused both Stiles and Danny to jolt in surprise. "Okay, I think we can move now, but be careful," Scott said from a few yards away.
Danny joined Scott and stared down at what looked like a some kind of horrific metal trap had been set off, a broken stick caught in the teeth. "I think we can be pretty sure that the Hunters have been around," Danny said as he followed a trip wire back towards the path and looked up to find a net strung in the trees.
"I could smell the wolfsbane. This teeth on this trap are coated with it," Scott said as he stood up.
"We should probably go. If the trap is meant to keep a werewolf here, Hunters are probably checking them and I don't think we want to be around when they show up," Stiles shoved his hands in his pockets and looked around the trees with suspicion. "Does this reset our Days Where We Didn't Almost Die counter back to zero?"
"He actually has one on his desk," Scott told Danny as they walked back to where Stiles had parked the jeep.
Stiles nodded emphatically. "And I've never even had to make a second card with the number three on it, because we've never made it past a month."
"We had a little celebration when we finally broke into the double digits," Scott added.
Danny nodded absently as he listened to their banter, his thoughts already circling back around to Isaac and Jackson as he shivered slightly in the summer heat.
*****
Come A Little Closer (If You Dare) - Part Two
Written for Teen Wolf Bingo, Prompt/Pairing: Angst - Danny/Isaac
Summary: Danny's three point summer plan - get a new tan, a new boyfriend, and a new computer - was abruptly changed when he learned about the existence of werewolves. Danny's new three point summer plan: stay alive, learn how to fire a gun, and find out more about the skinny werewolf with curly hair.
Content Notes: Canon typical violence, discussion of child abuse, discussion of mental illness, discussion of sexuality and homophobia. PG-13.
On AO3: Come A Little Closer (If You Dare)
On DW: Come A Little Closer (If You Dare)
Some nights Danny wondered if when he looked back at his time in high school if he'd remember this as the summer when he found out werewolves are real, or maybe even as the summer when he accidentally became an auxiliary member of the local werewolf pack. He had always planned on leaving Beacon Hills after he graduated high school; go to the east coast to attend the university of his choice and then settle in somewhere and do something revolutionary. That future seemed a little more unlikely than it had only a few weeks earlier, when he'd been only vaguely aware that some messed up shit was going down in the town and the school but had never made the leap to werewolves. Because, really, what sane person's first assumption was werewolves - except for Stilinski, who didn't exactly count as sane. Then again, Danny wasn't so sure he counted as sane anymore either.
The werewolves themselves were a little rough around the edges, wild and maybe even feral, but after Danny spent a month trying to stay alive while they weathered the attacks by the Alpha Pack he thought he understood why. There was something about standing in the woods in the dead of night - soaked in blood that wasn't all your own, holding an empty gun because at the very least it could be used as a blunt object and it was better than nothing at all - that changed a person, and not necessarily for the better.
Maybe it was because Danny had spent the last semester watching rest of the pack changing without understanding why that gave him the distance to see how they'd become different people in such a short space of time. Sure, their core personality attributes were still there, but never before would he have imagined watching Stilinski empty a gun into a man without flinching, Jackson turning back to pull a wounded pack member to safety without concern for his own welfare, or McCall using his claws to tear out the throat of an enemy without being bothered by the blood staining his hands. They had all changed from being regular high school students, Lydia and Allison included, and Danny knew he wasn't exempt from the conditioning that was turning him into something else. Human wasn't necessarily an indicator of normality any longer, and when Danny found himself staring out at the dancing bodies in the club without feeling anything except a pull to return to the pack he set aside his untouched drink and walked out.
As he drove across town he had the sneaking suspicion that when he'd pressed to find out what the hell was happening after Jackson miraculously rose from the dead he'd gotten himself involved in something that would redefine his life - and not just in that now when he watches Buffy and Supernatural he takes notes. There weren't any cars in the lot outside the abandoned train depot when he parked, but that doesn't mean there wasn't anyone around. The werewolves often came and went on foot - on paws? - and Danny had grown accustomed to Jackson appearing out of nowhere. Apparently as fun as the Porsche was, running at superhuman speeds was better. A few months ago the only reason Danny would have even thought to come out to the dying industrial section of town would have been for the occasional raves and underground parties. Now, walking down the steps into the dank and filthy train depot was as natural as coming home after school.
There was only one light on and Danny stepped out onto the cracked concrete floor with an itch in his fingers that made him wish for the safety of a gun in his hands. His guns, a pair of Smith and Wessons along with an assortment of wolfsbane bullets, were stored safely in the trunk of his car mostly because with the pants and shirt he's wearing there was no place for concealment. Danny didn't typically come into places the pack inhabited armed, though after the Alpha Pack fiasco Derek didn't object to the humans associated with the pack being armed to take down werewolves.
Danny edged around the puddle of light from the lamp that was run off the small generator they'd gotten running, moving as silently as possible as he identified the lone figure sitting in the light. It was Isaac, his chin tilted slightly up and his gaze unseeing as he stared out into the darkness that engulfed the rest of the train depot. The humans all knew better than to startle a werewolf, though given their enhanced senses it was rarely an issue, and Danny stepped slowly so that he was in Isaac's range of vision.
"Isaac? Are you okay?" Danny asked. There wasn't a place where he could be in the train depot and still be out of range if Isaac decided to attack, so he took a step closer. Isaac gave no indication that he was aware of Danny's presence and continued to sit almost frighteningly still. Within a few minutes Danny had approached so that he within a few feet of Isaac and he sat down.
"Isaac?" Danny asked again, his voice heavy with worry now. He knew Isaac about as well as he did most of the other werewolves in the pack; he knew them in passing as classmates and teammates and he'd shared the occasional meal and the slightly more frequent battle with them. Isaac had never been overly social with Danny, or with anyone outside of the core set of wolves that made up the pack, but Danny had found himself watching Isaac on more than one occasion. Most of the time Isaac would stand near Derek, his attention and movements attuned to the Alpha like an orchestra member to the conductor, but occasionally Isaac would stand to the side and seem to disappear into himself while the pack discussed the latest disaster.
Never before had Danny seen Isaac - or any of the werewolves - sit so rigidly and without awareness of his surroundings. There was a fine line of difference between a cataleptic and a catatonic state, a difference Danny could remember two months ago when he'd been taking his Advanced Placement Psychology exam, but at the moment all he could do was worry over how rigid Isaac's body was and how he could see the muscles in Isaac's arms standing out. He considered texting Derek, letting him know that something was wrong with one of the beta wolves, but footsteps on the stairs proved that unnecessary.
"What's wrong with him?" Danny asked, not having to turn to know it was Derek. The werewolves like to play with that, knowing who was at the door or carrying on conversations from rooms away, but that didn't mean Danny couldn't hold his own. His range was more limited, but that didn't mean he couldn't pay attention to the way people walked and held themselves, the way they breathed and they shifted.
"Nothing," Derek answered after a moment. "There's nothing wrong with him."
Danny turned and looked at Derek then. Werewolves also had a leg up on lie detecting, but again that didn't mean that Danny was stupid. "A werewolf thing or something else?" he asked. Jackson did that too, outright denial when he didn't want to think about something, and Danny had learned to push when it was important - like with werewolves and how the hell Jackson had died and come back to life.
"Something else," Derek admitted after a moment, frowning down at where Danny was sitting next to Isaac. "He comes out of it after a while. Just don't touch him."
"What happens if I touch him?" Danny asked. He hadn't been planning on it but obviously this wasn't the first time this had happened and Danny wanted to know more. Like he'd told Stiles and Scott when the whole werewolf thing had finally come out, the more information they could put together the better change they had a seeing patterns and coming up with solutions before people died or turned into lizards or whatever.
Derek sighed. "Sometimes nothing. Sometimes when I try to move him, he won't even respond. Sometimes he attacks. His claws don't do much harm to me, but you won't heal as easily."
Danny knew that much from experience; he had a set of still healing claw marks around his ankle from where he'd been grabbed and dragged across the forest floor by one of the Alpha Pack. The only reason he was still alive was because Allison was a really excellent shot with a crossbow and hadn't hesitated in aiming for the Alpha's head. "Why?" The question could be interpreted a lot of ways and Danny was just as interested in Derek's interpretation as he was in the answer.
"He's a member of my pack. I bit him," Derek replied - an evasion if Danny had ever heard one. "Will you stay a little longer? I was going to get dinner but I don't want to leave him alone in case someone shows up." Someone probably covered anyone from Hunters to cops to Peter Hale.
"I can stay," Danny said without looking at the time. His parents were used to him staying out late in the summer and they didn't ask many questions about where he'd been. They either thought they already knew or they didn't want to know about what Danny was doing with his nights. Danny would bet anything that werewolves had never crossed their minds.
Derek left without responding and Danny considered Isaac for a long handful of minutes, trying to organize his memories of Isaac as much as possible. He had vague flashes of Isaac on the lacrosse field and leaning against the lockers while the coach talked, and a sudden switch from overlarge hoodies to leather jackets with an attitude adjustment to match. There was something else, but try as he might Danny couldn't figure out what he was missing. Isaac still hadn't moved by the time Derek returned with a bag of takeout and Danny watched as Derek opened the cartons of Chinese and set them out one of the rough surfaces that passes as a table. Danny knew exactly how much food werewolves tended to consume and how without exception they threw themselves into eating with enthusiasm. Even Jackson, who had been ridiculously obsessive about what he ate, now ate whatever was within reach. Isaac didn't stir at the aroma of food, which must have been more intense for him than it was for Danny, and Danny's own stomach rumbled at the scent of chicken chow mein.
There was the hint of a smirk pulling at the corners of Derek's mouth as he passed over a carton and a pair of chop sticks without a word, and Danny took it. He wasn't about to object if Derek was going to feed him and they ate their late night meal in silence in the somewhat dank and dark not-so-abandoned train depot.
Derek stood and dusted off his pants, gathering the trash into a bag and putting the remaining food into a battered blue cooler. "You should go, it's late."
Danny pushed himself to his feet. "What about Isaac?" When Derek only raised his eyebrows in response, Danny sighed - it was uncanny how alike Derek and Jackson were when they were being stubborn and obtuse on purpose. "Will he be okay?"
"He's fine," Derek said, his jaw tightening in a way that Danny had already learned meant the end of discussion on a topic. Usually that was right before Derek walked out of a meeting and Danny was smart enough to know when to stop pushing an issue before claws and fangs made an appearance.
"Goodnight," Danny said, walking away toward the stairs. He looked back when he reached the first step and watched as Derek picked up Isaac and carried him into the subway car. Isaac didn't protest to being picked up by under his arms, or even react, and his body remained in the same stiff position as Derek set him down on the mattress at the back of the subway car. Danny shivered and hurried up the stairs and out to his car, disturbed for reasons he couldn't quite name.
His sleep was uneasy that night, and not because he was waiting for a member of the Alpha Pack to show up at his window or remembering the sound of growls and gunfire echoing in the woods. In the morning, as he ate breakfast with his parents and his brother Nathan who was home for the summer, he caught his mom and dad exchanging significant glances. Neither of them said anything about Danny coming home in the middle of the night and his mom just waved and told him to be home for dinner when Danny said that he was going to go meet up with Jackson.
Twenty minutes later he was at the meet up spot in the woods, the same place they went most days for training, and Isaac was gathered with the rest of the beta wolves as they considered the training course Derek and Stiles had set up for them. The wolves took off at Derek's command, Stiles, Allison, and Lydia gathering their gear as they got set to take their positions as fake Hunters and distractions, and Danny had a brief moment where he wondered if the previous night had happened at all.
"Danny, let's go," Lydia called, holding a quiver of arrows in his direction.
Danny accepted the quiver and the bow without argument - he'd only been learning to shoot for the past few weeks and knew that the chances of him actually hitting any of the wolves were pretty low. For this task that was okay, they were mostly there to provide people to dodge from and Stiles had been extremely apologetic last week when he'd caught Boyd in the calf with an arrow. The rest of them had just been surprised considering Stiles was fairly proficient with a gun but still struggled with basic bow skills.
From his perch in a tree Danny watched as the betas came tearing through the foliage, neatly dodging the volley of arrows he and Lydia were sending their way. Isaac leapt and bounded as nimbly as the other werewolves, dropping to his hands as he took a sharp corner and Danny stared at the now empty space where Isaac had just been. The trees stopped rustling as the woods returned to the near quiet that followed a pack of wolves racing through and Danny dropped back to the ground struck with the mental image of Isaac frozen in place with Hunters watching from the trees.
*****
"Do you mind?" Danny asked, barely catching the bottle of imported beer that Jackson had tossed at him. Jackson didn't see anything wrong with using his enhanced werewolf strength for day-to-day tasks and Danny could already foresee that lacrosse next year was going to be more violent than usual. And given that it was lacrosse, that was saying something.
Jackson settled into the lounge chair next to Danny's and fussed with the label on his own bottle of beer before responding. "I brought you a beer instead of making you get your lazy ass up to go get it, what more do you want?" he asked with hardly a glance in Danny's direction as he considered his long bare legs stretched out in front of him.
Danny was reasonably certain that Jackson and Erica had tagged along with Lydia the last time she'd gone to get a pedicure - there was something exceedingly odd about werewolves with neatly manicured feet. Maybe even odder than the fact that it was his best friend who was one of the werewolves in question. He quickly returned his eyes to Jackson's expansive backyard, not wanting to seem like he was checking out Jackson's legs. Danny was pretty sure the only reason Jackson still occasionally hit on him was because Danny turned him down each time without fail. It wasn't that Jackson wasn't attractive but when they were fifteen Danny had stuck to his guns about not being Jackson's gay experiment and ruining their friendship as a result. Instead he'd taken Jackson down to the local club, kept an eye out while Jackson made out with a variety of guys, and had rolled his eyes when Jackson had proclaimed "Guys are alright, but I prefer someone with breasts".
"Out with it," Jackson said, drawing Danny from his thoughts.
"What?" Danny asked, looking over to find Jackson watching him with an expression of smug contemplation.
Jackson rolled his eyes. "Who is it this time? You only stop checking me out when you have the hots for someone, so spill.
"I don't," Danny said, waving his free hand in a gesture as casual as he could make it.
"You realize that I can literally hear your heartbeat speed up when you lie?" Jackson smirked and then frowned suddenly. "Just tell me it's not Stilinski or McCall. I have to hang out with those losers enough as it is without you dating one of them too."
It was Danny's turn to roll his eyes and sigh. "It's not Stilinski or McCall," he said before he quickly occupied his mouth with his bottle of beer. Not that he would have anything against going out with either of them, but McCall lived and breathed for Allison Argent and Stilinski was still stumbling his way out of the bi-sexual closet.
"Uh huh," Jackson said thoughtfully. "Which means it's one of the pack, because you haven't smelled like a club for weeks now."
"You know it's really creepy to essentially stalk me by using my scent and heartbeat, right?" Danny asked. He briefly considered cautioning Jackson against pulling that on Lydia but he kind of wanted to see if she'd stick Jackson in a literal dog house now that he fit the bill.
Jackson was undeterred. "Not Boyd - you don't steal people's boyfriends even though you totally could. Derek is hot, in that scary-sexy way, but I think you might be out of luck there. I'm pretty sure Derek doesn't date - the most you could probably hope for is a rough fuck against his Camaro."
Danny took a second to push that mental image out of his head because it was somehow thrilling and terrifying at the same time. Though, it was interesting that Jackson had been the one to suggest that Derek was scary-sexy and Danny had a sudden flash of insight into Jackson's bizarre reactions to Derek. "Not Derek," he said finally, setting aside his half empty bottle and staring resolutely into the darkening sky.
"Isaac," Jackson said suddenly and Danny's slight jolt was the only answer either of them needed. "Could be worse, I guess. He's kind of attractive. Tall."
Danny's lips parted in shock and he shifted so that he could see Jackson. Jackson had never approved of anyone Danny had dated, or had even talked about liking. In retrospect, Damian had been a totally douche just like Jackson had said, but at the time Danny had thought that Jackson was just jealous of anyone who Danny expressed interest in. From Jackson "could be worse" was practically an enthusiastic blessing.
He sighed and scratched the back of his neck. "Doesn't really matter, does it," he said, because once again he'd fallen for someone he stood no chance with. He had spent the last two weeks watching Isaac and by the time he realized that he was waiting to catch Isaac's small smiles it was too late. "He probably doesn't even like guys."
"He'd be stupid not to want you," Jackson said with a nod. "That's not going to be a problem."
Danny shook his head and let his hand find his beer again, watching stars pop into place in the night sky. Jackson was a pain in the ass sometimes but he was a good friend.
*****
Jackson was the worst friend. Ever. In the history of friends.
"Which is why making out with guys is not as bad of an idea as it seems at first," Jackson concluded with a nod. "Really, you should give it a try sometime."
Danny gave a silent prayer that the floor of the woods would open up and swallow him whole. Jackson had spent the last ten minutes as they walked the southeastern edge of the Hale Pack borders to re-mark the territory lines by scent explaining about how he was attracted to some guys and how their strong hands were really fantastic in the right circumstances; Danny had spent the last ten minutes looking as far away from Isaac as he possibly could. If this was Jackson's idea of subtly finding out if Isaac was at all interested in guys, well Danny was going to have to give Jackson a firm re-education on what subtle meant.
"What about you?" Jackson asked Isaac, his voice loud in the mid-morning woods. "Would you make out with a guy?"
Danny was going to murder Jackson, it was now officially on his to-do list, but even so he couldn't help but glance over to where Isaac was lagging slightly behind.
Isaac's gaze was directed down and either he'd picked up a light sunburn or he was blushing. "I," he paused and looked over, neatly avoiding Danny's gaze, "I would. If it was the right guy."
The worst part was that both Isaac and Jackson could probably hear the little jump his heart gave at learning that Isaac wasn't exclusively heterosexual. Of course, the right guy didn't necessarily mean Danny, but at least he wasn't out of the running entirely.
"Didn't think you would be," Jackson said with a knowing smile in Danny's direction. "Hey, I'm going to run ahead, I've got things to do today. Isaac, you'll stay with Danny, right? Make sure he gets out of the woods in one piece?"
Isaac had barely finished saying "sure" when Jackson gave Danny a barely discrete thumbs up and a not-at-all discrete wink before he dashed off into the woods on all fours.
"I'm going to kill him," Danny said faintly; it was the first thing he'd said out loud in at least fifteen minutes.
"Well, refreshing the territory lines isn't exactly the most glamorous task," Isaac said as he traced his hand along the trunk of a nearby tree.
They didn't really have to touch things as they went, just passing through would leave enough scent to declare that Beacon Hills belonged to the Hales, but every werewolf Danny had gone with on this task had almost absently touched anything within reach of their path. "Sorry about, you know," Danny said finally, deciding it was more awkward to leave Jackson's little speech unmentioned than it was to just deal with it.
Isaac shrugged and turned around so that he was walking backward and facing Danny. "No big deal. Erica and Stiles go off on the weirdest tangents sometimes. The other day Stiles spent twenty minutes telling me about the benefits and drawbacks of socks. You kind of get used to it when you hang out with the pack."
Danny let out a slow breath, trying to decide if that meant Isaac had actually been blissfully unaware of Jackson's true purpose behind his little speech. Unfortunately Isaac dashed any hopes of that a moment later.
"You never know though, who someone likes, until you ask. Right?" Isaac asked, waiting for Danny to nod. "You mostly like guys, yeah?"
"Yeah," Danny said, his throat feeling a little dry. "Sometimes I think a girl is attractive, but I still don't really want to do anything with her."
Isaac nodded thoughtfully. "I've liked girls, but I've never really done anything about it."
"And guys?" Danny asked, hoping that his heartbeat wasn't as loud to Isaac as it felt to him.
"I've liked a few guys. The way they look, sometimes, or how they move. How they act. Never really done anything about that either," Isaac admitted, twisting around so he was facing forward again. "Not really sure what to do about that."
"Yeah," Danny agreed again, mentally face-palming and begging his mind to come out with something that actually might indicate that he liked Isaac without being utterly stupid about it. "Do you want to go get something to drink when we're done here? There's a coffee shop that's not too far from the edge of town, they make these really incredible danishes and we could talk, or something." He trailed off a little bit by the end, but for the most part when he played it back in his head it didn't sound too terrible.
Isaac looked back over his shoulder, seeming to consider Danny for a moment. "Yeah, okay. That sounds good."
"Great," Danny said. He smiled - watching the corners of Isaac's mouth pull up in the brightest smile he had seen from Isaac so far - and he considered killing Jackson slightly less when he got his hands on him.
*****
Over the next two weeks Danny made a concentrated effort to spend more time with Isaac. He sat near him when the whole pack was hanging out and volunteered for tasks that would get them sent places together. The first time Danny had volunteered to walk the western ridge to look for indications that Hunters had been through the woods recently - right after Isaac had been assigned the task - Derek had fixed him with a long stare before nodding and sending them on their way without a third in their group.
If Danny noticed that Isaac had started to gravitate towards him when they hung out as a pack, well, he tried not to read too much into it. Being friends with Isaac wouldn't be a bad thing and while Danny was popular at school he wasn't really close with many people. He and Isaac spent a lot their time together talking about werewolves and the insanity that had invaded their lives, but also about mundane things like the classes they hated the most and lacrosse. It was nice to have people - werewolves - to spent time with, and making a tentative connection with Isaac only reinforced how alone Danny had felt those last few weeks of the school year.
The more Danny learned about Isaac, the more he was intrigued. Isaac had a dry sense of humor that it took Danny a while to get, and he found himself grinning when Isaac would make a quiet joke disguised as a comment that no one else seemed to understand. Isaac wasn't looking forward to going back to school in the fall at all and didn't have any firm plans about college or what he was going to do after he graduated. Isaac preferred Spiderman to Batman but would pick the comics of either over the movies any day.
Danny collected these tidbits about Isaac and shared his own in return, telling Isaac about the computer programming that he did, and why goalie was his favorite position on the field, and about his parents and how he knew they cared but they never really seemed to see him. Isaac listened and asked questions and generally seemed interested, except for when Danny started talking about family. The first time Isaac quickly changed the subject, Danny had shrugged it off and followed Isaac to check on some tracks he'd seen in the dirt, but it didn't take long to realize that Isaac shied away from the topic every time Danny brought it up.
"Do you want me to drop you at home after you pick up your stuff?" Danny asked as he drove Isaac back to the train depot. It was late, past midnight, but they were one night past the full moon and no one was dead; Danny was going to call it a win. They all looked a little worse for wear and Isaac had been half asleep in the passenger seat while Danny drove. At least he had been until Danny had spoken, now his eyes were wide open even though he was studiously examining his hands instead of looking at Danny.
"I live with Derek," Isaac said after a long moment of uncomfortable silence.
"Oh," Danny said. He'd seen Isaac stay the night in the train depot, just as he'd seen all of the werewolves camp down there on occasion, and had thought that Isaac had simply preferred to be with the pack during the summer. "Okay," he added after a moment, hoping that Isaac would clarify why he lived with Derek.
Isaac scrambled out of Danny's car and hurried to the entrance of the train depot as soon as Danny reached the parking lot, the passenger door closing before Danny could even say goodbye.
"Goodnight," he said to the empty space, hoping that Isaac was listening. "I'll see you tomorrow."
By the time Danny parked his car in the driveway he had a sinking realization that he knew something about Isaac that he hadn't been told, something from before he'd ever really even known Isaac. A quick search of the local news in the last year provided the details almost immediately: Isaac's dad had been murdered in the late winter. Danny remembered that now, the rumors that had cropped up for a few weeks about how Isaac had murdered his dad and had been taken away by the police and was a fugitive. At the time Danny remembered thinking it was pretty tasteless for the lacrosse team to make jokes about that, considering that Isaac was on the lacrosse team, but overall he hadn't paid too much attention and people found something else to talk about soon enough.
Danny clicked on the article out of reflex and felt his stomach sink at the description of the murder. Mysterious circumstances, the body being practically ripped apart, no firm leads on how the murder had been committed - before the start of the summer it would have just seemed weird. Now it practically screamed werewolves. Danny weighed that in his mind for a moment, remembering how vicious the werewolves had been in the nights leading up to the full moon and how they had bit and scratched each other until there was blood mixing with the dirt of the forest. He checked the date of the murder, and then a full moon chart for the year; it was like adding two and two and getting four, and Danny sat for a long time with the conclusion that he'd reached.
*****
Danny stood near Scott and Stiles the next time Derek divided them into groups to sweep the woods for signs of Hunters. Derek seemed to understand his request without having to be asked; he grouped Isaac, Erica, and Boyd together first and left Scott, Stiles, and Danny to the end to make it look like they were just the last available trio. It wasn't without a suspicious glance though and Danny met his gaze steadily. True, this was probably something Danny should just ask Isaac outright but "did you kill your father?" was a pretty awful question to ask someone.
Danny followed Stiles and Scott out to Stiles' jeep and they set off down the road. It took fifteen minutes to drive to the other side of the nature preserve and Stiles chatted to Scott about something or another the whole way there. Danny barely noticed, asking himself for the dozenth time if this was something he really needed to know. He could picture it in his mind, Isaac leaping too quickly to be seen, his claws slashing through his father's stomach and his teeth tearing through the soft skin of his throat. Having watched one of the Alpha Pack kill a Hunter in the exact same way probably hadn't helped Danny's imagination in this regard.
"So, what's shaking?" Stiles asked once they were well into the woods.
"What?" Danny asked as soon as he realized Stiles was speaking to him and not Scott.
Stiles exchanged glances with Scott. "Well, usually you go with Jackson or Isaac, so we figured that meant you had something you wanted to ask us," Stiles explained, Scott nodding along.
Danny had picked to go along with Scott and Stiles for a few reasons. They were the ones who had been involved with werewolves the longest - except for Derek - and were the most likely to know the truth. They were also the most likely to tell him the truth if he asked. "Did Isaac kill his father?" Danny asked, forcing the words past the lump in his throat.
Scott jolted to a stop and stared at Danny while Stiles tripped over an exposed tree root. Once Stiles was back on his feet he stared at Danny too.
"I know he wouldn't have meant to do it. It was probably right after he'd been bitten, right?" Danny reasoned. He had seen Jackson lose control a few days ago; Jackson had only stopped once Derek had dragged him away from the pack and growled so loud it seemed to shake the very earth around them. If Derek hadn't been around when Isaac lost control it was easy to see how it could have happened.
"It was shortly after Isaac was bitten," Scott said slowly as if weighing his words, "but Isaac didn't kill his father."
Danny frowned and tried to rewrite his mental scenario of what had happened. "Then who did? From the coroner's report it didn't look like anything a human would do unless they were consciously emulating a werewolf."
"You hacked the coroner's database?" Stiles asked, sounding somewhere between scandalized and impressed.
Danny shrugged; he had actually hacked into the Sheriff Department's database, but he probably shouldn't tell Stiles that.
"It was Jackson," Scott said and motioned to them to keep walking through the woods. "Well, Jackson as the Kanima."
"Well, more like it was Matt using Jackson as a murder weapon," Stiles added. "Jackson didn't really have any say in who he was killing."
Jackson had explained to Danny a little bit about being something else for a while before he became a werewolf, but he had refused the elaborate any further than the fact that he hadn't been in control and that's why he'd been acting so weird during the Spring. Jackson hadn't said anything about being used as a murder weapon, but it actually explained a fair amount about Jackson's behavior the past few months.
Danny resolved to keep an eye on Jackson in general - being there for Jackson usually meant keeping him from becoming overtly self destructive since having a heart-to-heart conversation with him was typically counterproductive. Though, maybe he would have to revisit the 'hey, you know you can tell me things' conversation with Jackson. "Matt? With the camera? Who killed himself a few weeks before the lacrosse championship?" Danny asked, not quite daring not to believe what he was being told after everything he'd seen recently.
"A Hunter killed him in order to gain control over Jackson, but other than that, yes, that Matt." Stiles scowled and then muttered, "freaking psychopath."
"But why would Matt want to kill Isaac's dad? Or anyone at all?" Danny asked as he tried to reason it all out. He knew that Matt had been implicated in the murders but he'd never realized that the werewolf population of the town had anything to do with it.
Stiles and Scott were giving each other significant looks again, but it was Scott who finally spoke. "You like Isaac, right? You guys are going out?"
Danny wasn't sure that they were 'going out' just yet, but he was definitely interested. "I like him," he said, suddenly realizing that this was actually easier with Jackson, when Jackson had just assumed and Danny never had to say it out loud.
"Then you should probably know that Isaac's dad wasn't the nicest guy out there. Matt killed Mr. Lahey because after Isaac's older brother and some other kids almost drowned Matt, Mr. Lahey threatened him to keep quiet about it," Stiles explained, his mouth twisting with distaste.
"Oh," Danny said faintly, trying to work his mind around that.
"He was hurting Isaac," Scott said abruptly. "Like, really hurting him. There was a freezer in their basement and he would lock Isaac inside to punish him. I saw the freezer."
Danny felt his chest constrict suddenly and almost wished they'd just told him that Isaac had lost control before the full moon and had accidentally killed his father. That would have been easier to hear. Even though it was mid-summer and the heat had worked its way through the trees to the floor of the woods, Danny felt chilled and heartsick.
"We probably should have let Isaac tell you that, but pretty much everyone else knows," Stiles said and then sighed. "But, basically, this is us trying to tell you that if you're not actually interested in Isaac you should probably back off. The last thing we need is another emotionally distraught werewolf running around this town. And, Derek will possibly kill you if you mess around with one of his pack."
"What Stiles is trying to say is that Isaac's our friend," Scott glared when Stiles huffed and shook his head slightly, "and we don't want to see him get hurt."
"Right," Danny said, running a hand through his hair as he looked out at the trees surrounding them. A five minute walk through the woods was really not enough time to process everything from 'your best friend was being used as a murder weapon' to 'the guy you like was abused by his father'. "Does this whole werewolf thing get any easier?" Danny asked after a another minute or two.
"Not really," Stiles said at the exact same time that Scott said, "Kind of." They stared at each other, visibly surprised by each other's answers.
Danny laughed, mostly because if he didn't he was probably just going to sit down at the base of a tree and not get back up again for a while. "I'll keep that in mind."
"Things are actually pretty good right now," Stiles said. "No one has tried to kill us in, what, two weeks? Must be a record."
Danny was about to reply that it hadn't quite been two full weeks since the last time they'd been shot at but Scott stopped suddenly and threw out his hands.
"Don't move, either of you," Scott instructed.
Stiles and Danny froze and looked around slowly for whatever had put Scott on alert. "Scott, whatcha doing?" Stiles asked when Scott started carefully edging to the side.
Scott didn't reply, following something only he could sense, and a moment later a loud metallic click caused both Stiles and Danny to jolt in surprise. "Okay, I think we can move now, but be careful," Scott said from a few yards away.
Danny joined Scott and stared down at what looked like a some kind of horrific metal trap had been set off, a broken stick caught in the teeth. "I think we can be pretty sure that the Hunters have been around," Danny said as he followed a trip wire back towards the path and looked up to find a net strung in the trees.
"I could smell the wolfsbane. This teeth on this trap are coated with it," Scott said as he stood up.
"We should probably go. If the trap is meant to keep a werewolf here, Hunters are probably checking them and I don't think we want to be around when they show up," Stiles shoved his hands in his pockets and looked around the trees with suspicion. "Does this reset our Days Where We Didn't Almost Die counter back to zero?"
"He actually has one on his desk," Scott told Danny as they walked back to where Stiles had parked the jeep.
Stiles nodded emphatically. "And I've never even had to make a second card with the number three on it, because we've never made it past a month."
"We had a little celebration when we finally broke into the double digits," Scott added.
Danny nodded absently as he listened to their banter, his thoughts already circling back around to Isaac and Jackson as he shivered slightly in the summer heat.
*****
Come A Little Closer (If You Dare) - Part Two