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kaycares22 · 6 years

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What Are You Doing New Year's Eve? (Scott/Malia)

Merry Christmas, @allisonscott ! I was your Secret Santa for Scolia Secret Santa. I wanted to give you a slow-build relationship, so here’s a decade-plus of NYE’s. I know something went wrong with the original submission, so here it is, sans coding errors and with a complete ending. Hope you enjoy. :)

Read it here or on AO3.

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New Year’s Eve, 2011

Lydia Martin’s parties are a status symbol in Beacon Hills. You’re not someone unless you can somehow score an invite, and nothing rivals her New Year’s Eve party. Two years ago, Scott had spent New Year’s binge watching Marvel movies with his mom and Stiles, listening to Stiles volley between lamenting their low, low status and inventing possible scenarios of what was unfolding at the party across town. This year, Scott wanders that same party, followed by the ghost of a girl he’s not quite ready to shake and mentally curses Lydia Martin and her parties for bringing Allison Argent into his life.

At ten minutes till midnight, he’s still torn between wanting to leave this godawful year behind and not being ready to part with what 2011 will signify for the rest of his life. Suddenly, it’s too warm in the overcrowded living room where someone’s starting to pass out poppers, so he walks past the kitchen where Lydia and Derek are filling solo cups with champagne and finds himself in the backyard. He expects to be alone - after all, it’s almost midnight - but there’s a flash of movement near the pool, and he looks over just as Malia’s head whips around. She’s sitting cross-legged on the tiled border, dressed in cutoffs and a sweatshirt that looks an awful lot like Stiles’s lacrosse hoodie. From where he stands on the patio, it looks like she’s shivering.

His initial reaction is to turn around and head back inside. Malia’s become a staple lately, a siamese twin glued to Stiles’s side, but Scott still doesn’t feel like he knows her - and he’s not sure he wants to. (Stiles’s survivor guilt has him throwing himself into saving someone else while Scott’s has him certain he shouldn’t be allowed to lead a pack.) But then he makes eye contact with her, and he can’t just slip back inside.

“It’s almost midnight,” he says instead as he lingers in that spot just outside the door. He silently wills her to give up her spot and go join the party’s impending countdown.

She shrugs instead. “It was midnight three hours ago in New York.”

The thought hadn’t crossed his mind that across the country, it’s already a year where she will never exist, and he feels warm again. He can’t head back inside now. The only other choice is to cross the patio.

“Asleep.”

“Asleep?”

Malia nods. She doesn’t offer any more information at first. Instead, she gazes out over the pool for a long, silent minute before she finally says, “He still smells like it.”

Scott knows what she means. He can still smell it, too, the way it lingers on his best friend, even after the dark circles faded from around Stiles’s eyes and his skin turned to its normal pale instead of deathly white. But it’s like there’s been some unspoken promise between Scott and Malia to not tell Stiles. After all, he’s still just barely enough on this side of things to fall asleep in the middle of parties.

“He’s gonna be fine,” Scott says, grateful he hasn’t yet taught her about the way heartbeats speed up when someone tells a half-truth. Fine is probably outside the realm of possibility, has been since Scott got bit, but his glass has always been half-full too.

Malia doesn’t even acknowledge that he talked, though. She just keeps staring across the backyard like there’s something out there he’s missed. Her voice isn’t as raspy as it was when she first shifted back to this body, but she still doesn’t talk much. She doesn’t make much eye contact either. Really, she doesn’t do much with anyone who isn’t Stiles. And with him asleep in the guest room upstairs, she’s much less the furious half-animal out for vengeance from the people who forced her into this life and much more the scared half-girl who still hasn’t figured this whole human thing out. And at seven minutes to midnight, he can’t just leave her out there alone.

With a sigh, he gives up his hope of being alone when his first year post-Allison begins and crosses the few yards between himself and Malia. At least she finally turns her head to look at him when he drops down beside her.

“You know, you’re gonna miss it.” Malia just keeps staring at him until he finally elaborates. “Midnight. Here, in California.”

“I don’t care.”

Music spills out of the house behind them, coupled with excited voices as the new year gets closer. It’s too jubilant to match the tightness that grows in his chest every time he checks the time on his phone. Scott needs a distraction, which is how he ends up putting his foot in his mouth.

First, though, he presses his palms against the mosaiced walkway and leans back so he can see her face. “Do you remember New Year’s? From before?”

She shoots him a look that’s definitely more furious half-animal than scared half-girl and bares her teeth.

Scott doesn’t recoil. In his head, he can see Stiles placing a gentle, albeit poorly timed, hand on her shoulder as he reminds her Not at friends. Not at people period. But Scott doesn’t say anything. Baring your teeth at the new year feels somehow appropriate tonight. He also doesn’t expect her to tell him anything else, which is why he’s surprised when she talks again.

“The last New Year’s I remember, my dad told me it was gonna be my year. Then three months later, I killed my mom and my sister.”

Again, Stiles’s voice is there in the back of his head, reminding him that they need to keep telling her it wasn’t her fault. But Scott pushes it away. The heaviness in his own heart says guilt doesn’t work that way. Instead, he lays back in the cold grass, trying to ignore the way the music has stopped. The way people are louder, more excited. He can’t get his hands to move the right way to check the time on his phone again, though, so he folds them under his head.

“The last time my mom made us make resolutions was the last new year’s before my dad walked out,” he tells her, swapping terrible holiday for terrible holiday. He’s not sure why he tells her at all until she lays back beside him, and it seems to make sense.

“New Year’s is stupid.”

“The worst.”

It catches him off-guard when the countdown starts inside. His chest pulls tighter and tighter until it feels like he can’t breath. Until he sees stars. Until he starts to wonder if this is what Stiles’s panic attacks feel like.

Happy New Year! the collective voices inside cheer, and his heart lodges itself in the back of his throat, threatening to choke him.

“It’s midnight,” Malia sighs beside him.

Her words come back to him without any conscious effort on his part, and his throat starts to feel like it might not close up after all. “It was midnight three hours ago in New York.”

New Year’s Eve/Day, 2013

Paris has been good for her. Scott, Stiles, Lydia, even Derek got to just be for parts of high school. They all had memories of parties, dances, first dates, and friday night games. And (at least by the time she settled into her new skin) Malia had berserkers and dread doctors and a homicidal mom for good measure. But in Paris, she gets to just be. There’s dance clubs and boys with names she sometimes can’t pronounce and liquor laced with wolfsbane once she finds a pack Derek gives her the name of. And it’s everything she wanted it to be.

By New Year’s Eve, she’s been there almost a week. She still barely knows any French, but that just gives her an excuse to not talk when she’d rather be doing other things with her mouth. She spends the holiday out with the two youngest members of the pack she’s stumbled upon, then ends up in the quiet of an apartment with Paul, who she met a few hours ago. She has no idea when the clock switches over to a new year, and it’s bliss.

The sky is still grey the next morning when she wakes up to a buzzing that sounds like it’s just below her ear. It takes her a minute to figure out what just woke her, another to remember where she is, and thirty seconds more to realize that it’s her phone in the pocket of her discarded cuttoffs on the floor. Trying to stay as still as possible to avoid waking Paul, she slides her arm across the mattress until she can reach her pocket, then fishes around until she finally finds her phone. She pulls it out and flips it over to find Scott’s name on the screen, and there’s a weird tug at her heart.

I don’t know what time it is there, but it’s midnight in New York, so I think it’s the new year there?

It’s the first time it dawns on her that it is indeed the New Year, and she’s about to tell him as much when the … appears on the screen to let her know that he’s typing again.

Stiles just pointed out that I could’ve Googled that. So it’s six there.

He wants you to know he had to tell me cause he’s an asshole.

Anyways, Happy New Year.

Malia can picture them; half a world away, they’re probably in Derek’s loft. Just like they were for Christmas, except the Sheriff and Melissa probably aren’t there this time. Lydia didn’t throw a party last year when they were all at odds with one another, and holidays feel different now when it’s the only time Stiles and Lydia make the trip back from the east coast. Which is probably why Scott reacted the way he did when she told him on Christmas she was leaving the next day for Paris. But Lydia had MIT, and Scott had Davis, and Malia needed this.

Happy New Year, she writes and then deletes it. New Year’s is stupid, she writes back instead.

She waits for his … to appear again, but it doesn’t. Derek texts her to wish her a Happy New Year, though, and so does Stiles, so she responds to both of them before she comes back to her message thread with Scott. Scrolling back up, she reads through their texts that stop abruptly on Christmas, right around the time she told him her plan out on Derek’s fire escape. He and Lydia had deferred for a semester while they fought a literal war, but they planned to leave Beacon Hills behind after the holiday. And Malia had still wanted her time to just be, to figure out who she was when she wasn’t Stiles’s girlfriend or Peter Hale’s daughter.

But Scott hadn’t understood, partly because they were still in the middle of… something. He never sat her down the way Stiles had, back when he had defined the word girlfriend for her and then panicked when she substituted it for mate, but they had spent a lot of time together. His mom started expecting her to wander downstairs in the morning after she sat them down to remind them that they both had goals for the future that a diaper bag doesn’t fit into (Malia didn’t get it). But Scott planned to leave, and Malia planned to do the same. And now, things had been weird.

She makes it to four days before she left when her screen suddenly jumps on its own, bringing her back down to his newest message: The worst.

Malia feels that same tug at her heart as she pictures him not in Derek’s loft but laying beside her in the grass instead. Younger, but somehow more worn. Maybe a little broken.

She’s not sure what else to say, but his … saves her again, and then is replaced by his next message: How’s 2014?

Lonely is the first word that comes to mind, even though Paul’s arm is still thrown around her waist. Kind of the same, she says instead.

She watches as he types something, then must delete, then types something again. Over and over, the cursor appears and then disappears again without another text. Then finally, he sends back a single word.

Cool.

It’s quick and short. She pictures him setting his phone back down or pocketing it again, then joining back in the conversation about Braeden’s latest mission or Stiles’s weird roommate who can’t sleep with the closet door closed. Time doesn’t really matter to her and time zones still make no sense, but for a minute, she can feel the distance between them now that they’re living in two different countries and two different years.

Before she can stop herself, she types out I miss you.

Her finger hovers over send for just a half second too long, and then, just when she’s about to press it, Paul stirs beside her, tugging her closer in his half-asleep state.

“What time is it?” he mumbles as he buries his face against the back of her neck. His stubble rubs against her skin in a way that’s nothing like Scott.

“A little after six.”

“ ‘S early.”

“Not that early,” she argues as she sets her phone back down on the floor and flips over on the mattress so that his lips meet hers instead of the back of her neck.

A few hours later, she finds her text to Scott, still waiting to be sent. She deletes it instead and doesn’t text him again until they’re both in the same year and the same country.

New Year’s Eve, 2015 Her name is Bri. He meets her in a Starbucks on a Friday night when he’s claimed a secluded table in the corner where he won’t have to listen to his roommate fight with his girlfriend for the ninth - ninth - time this week, and she asks to take the other half of the table. Six months later, she’s settled into the apartment he started renting after his roommate and his now ex got into fight #10, and she’s met his mom. But he still hasn’t told her that he moonlights as a supernatural creature. Which makes the holidays… awkward.

Thank god Stiles and Lydia are the planners Scott never wanted to be, because they listen to his panicked phone call and then solve the dilemma he thought had been the realization that she doesn’t know he’s a part of a freaking pack of animals. Their official unofficial New Year’s get together is moved to the McCall house where there’s significantly less weird paraphernalia if you don’t know that werewolves exist. Liam makes a joke about Scott flashing his eyes that makes Bri stare at him just a little too long, and Derek accidentally says the word pack a little too loudly when he’s talking to Mason at one point. And when Bri asks about Braeden’s scar, Scott is so caught off guard, he can’t think of anything at all to say and just shrugs a silent I don’t know. But other than that, they might actually make it through this holiday unscathed.

It’s just into the last hour of the year when Scott steps into the kitchen to grab another sadly wolfsbane-less beer when he finds himself face-to-face with Malia. Literally. If it weren’t for coyote instincts, he would’ve hit her with the door.

“Whoa. Sorry,” he says, even as she’s shaking her head with a, “I didn’t know you were there.”

“Yeah. Same.”

Even though she was clearly headed out of the kitchen, she sinks back against the counter as the door swings shut behind him. He’s been home for a week, but this is the first time he’s seen her. In fact, it’s the first time he’s seen her in awhile. Paris led to a visit to London to stay with Ethan and Jackson, then to Spain where a friend of theirs had a pack that also had a werecoyote. She made it back stateside before the end of the year, but her traveling didn’t stop. Instead, she jumped from state to state, meeting pack after pack to learn more about the Hale legacy and the packs that had welcomed other coyotes just like her. So, yeah. It’s been a while.

He wants to tell her that she looks good, but without any effort on his part, Bri is suddenly in the forefront of his mind. “How was Michigan?” he asks instead as he leans against the island opposite her.

“Cold.”

The irony would be funny if it wasn’t directed at him. But her icy, monosyllabic response kind of just hangs between them, suspended by whatever she had wanted to say before something had stopped her, too. Unfortunately, he’s a sucker for this sort of thing.

“Yeah? Isn’t it midnight there already? Like New York?” There’s a roll of her eyes, and he suddenly remembers the time their Physics teacher called her out and Stiles had tried to argue she was blinking with style. She may be traveling the country to try to learn more about what it means to be a half human, but she has definitely mastered the art of the eye roll. She pushes herself off of the counter, too, and pretends to busy herself with the Keurig on the opposite side of the room, but Scott doesn’t give up so easily. “Derek says there’s a whole family of werecoyotes up there.”

“That’s a different pack,” she says at the same instant he remembers that was Minnesota, not Michigan.

“Oh. Yeah. Right.”

“Right,” Malia echoes. The Keurig buzzes loudly, the smell of coffee fills the room. It’s almost enough to cover up the scene of her sudden frustration.

He keeps waiting for her to say something. She’s not good with emotions, but she’s never one to hold her tongue. If it’s him that she’s frustrated with, she would tell him. But the Keurig eventually stops, and it’s just silent between them. He gives her another thirty seconds while she blows into her mug to cool it off, and then he decides he’s had enough staring at her back for one night.

“Well, it’s good to see you,” he says. She doesn’t even turn around. And he’s more hurt than indignant about whatever this is. So he decides to just let it go. “I guess I’ll - “

“Hey! There you are.”

At the sound of another person’s voice, Malia finally does turn around. Just before he turns to see Bri, too, Scott watches her expression change to match Michigan’s winter.

“Bri,” he announces as he gestures between the two girls. “This is Malia. Malia, Bri.”

Bri is bubbly and outgoing. She thrives on human contact and relationships and social situations. She’s been talking about meeting his friends for weeks. She even got Lydia to laugh at her joke, albeit at Scott’s expense, earlier tonight. She’s kind of the antithesis of Malia, and, as she squares her shoulders, Malia seems determined to prove it.

“Hi,” Bri greets her with a tiny wave of her hand. “Happy New Year. It’s nice to finally meet you. Scott’s told me so much about you.”

Malia rolls her eyes sky high a second time as she strides right past Bri. “New Year’s is stupid.”

“Yeah,” Scott agrees because he doesn’t know what else to say. “It’s kind of the worst.” But he hasn’t even finished talking by the time the door is swinging behind her.

He apologizes to Bri and texts Stiles an SOS. Being Malia’s closest friend, he helps to keep her occupied and there’s not another run-in the rest of the night. But as he’s kissing her at midnight, Scott realizes he doesn’t know if Bri is short for Brianne or Brianna or something else entirely.

It takes a few months for their relationship to fizzle out. He never does tell her about the werewolf thing. By next New Year’s, Bri is a distant memory.

New Year’s Eve, 2017

There’s a throbbing in the back of her head. That’s her first coherent thought before she even opens her eyes. Then she tries to turn over, and cries out as pain shoots up her side.

“Malia?”

She grows still at the sound of her own name in her half-conscious state. She’s still too groggy to even know where the sound came from, but her inner coyote processes it as a threat. She doesn’t move even though her side still aches, doesn’t breathe. And then, it speaks again.

“Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.”

The tension leaves her body as she realizes she knows that voice. Slowly, she opens her eyes, but the room is bright with its harsh fluorescent light. She shuts them tightly again and curls in on herself, only to remember the pain in her side once it’s shooting down towards her thigh again. A little more tentatively, she just barely opens an eye to take her in her surroundings. It’s a hospital room, plain and white, and there’s Scott, just to the side of her bed. She wracks her brain trying to remember how she got here, but that throbbing grows worse, and she definitely doesn’t remember having seen Scott.

“What happened?” she finally asks.

“A hunter,” he sighs as he leans forward in the chair to rest his elbows on his knees. She watches, almost cross-eyed, as he reaches out to brush her hair back behind her ear with a level of gentleness that she doesn’t associate with Scott. “Derek said you guys would track them down when you heard more from Braeden’s contact, but you didn’t want to wait. So you went by yourself. They shot you.”

“That’s it?” Scott’s brow furrows as he stares back at her. But Malia doesn’t offer to explain as she instead tries to sit up. Scott’s hand is there in the next instant, stopping her with a firm hand on her shoulder.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Lia, c’mon. I just told you. You were shot.”

“I’ve been shot,” she argues as she tries again to ignore the pain and sit up.

“Yeah, not like this.” She finally stops in favor of listening to him, rapt enough with attention to fall for his act as he gently lays her back down. “The bullet lodged in your side, and you started to heal around it.”

“Is it still there?”

“No. But trust me, I’ve been there.” His hand lingers on her shoulder still, even though she hasn’t made another move to get up. It takes her a minute to realize her side is tingling now, a sure sign that he’s leeching her pain. Immediately, she shrugs her shoulder, and he at least complies and lets go.

He drops his hand to his side instead, but doesn’t move from his place beside her bed. The fog in her head is starting to clear enough now that she remembers bits and pieces. The crunch of a second set of footsteps in the woods, the suddenness of the pain as it bloomed just above her hip, the relief that came after she decided to stop fighting and just let her eyes close. But Scott is nowhere in her memories of that night. He was supposed to be at Derek’s tonight. She was supposed to be at Derek’s too, she had just planned to show up late. She has no idea what time it is, but it has to be close to midnight, if it hasn’t passed already.

Her eye’s narrow in Scott’s direction as it finally clicks. “Why are you here?”

He scoffs. “Because you were shot.”

“But how did you know I was here?”

Scott’s gaze suddenly drops to his feet, and his face grows darker. When he starts to rub at the back of his neck, he looks just like Stiles does when he’s been caught meddling. She’s sure there’s a chemosignal or two there to clue her in, but her brain is too tired to find it. Eventually, he clears his throat. “I’m, uh, your emergency contact.”

Oh.

Her defensive demeanor drops as his words sink in. It was years ago when she had written him down, replacing her father who didn’t need to know every time the monster of the week almost won. But years ago, she and Scott had been … something that they weren’t anymore.

“Well, I’m fine,” she says, knowing Lydia would tell her to say thank you. “You can go.”

“C’mon, Malia. I’m not gonna go.” He settles back down on the edge of the chair like that proves it.

“But it’s New Year’s Eve. It’s almost midnight.”

“And?”

“And you should be with the pack.”

“So now you’re not in my pack anymore?” he asks with a teasing smile. “Plus, it’s already midnight in New York.”

Malia sighs, dropping her head back down on the pillow. She hates hospitals with a passion, and Scott understands better than anyone else. It’s the smells and the sounds and the chemosignals everyone throws off without even trying. It’s suffocating to be surrounded by so much suffering, and it’s not the way anyone should start a new year. “This is stupid,” she finally sighs.

“New Year’s is stupid,” he echoes, and, despite herself, there’s a warmth that settles in the pit of her stomach - or maybe it’s just the painkillers.

Scott watches her expectantly until she finally relents with a roll of her eyes. “The worst.”

Whatever they gave her for the pain is good and strong and her head is still full of clouds. She might fall asleep again, or maybe she just starts to daze, but the next thing she knows, she’s shivering so hard, she can hear the sound of her own teeth chattering. And each violent shake rattles her sore side where they had to take her apart to find the bullet.

“It’s okay,” Scott says, and she realizes then that he got up again, pulling the thin hospital blankets up to her chin. “Your body’s just fighting the anesthesia. Is that better?”

The blankets don’t do anything to stop her shiver, but she still nods as she says, “Fine.”

He doesn’t buy it, sighing through his nose. “Here,” he says as he begins to slide off the jacket he’s still wearing, laying it over the arm of his chair.

“Scott…”

But he ignores her as he comes around the other side of the bed and kicks off his shoes. He peels the blankets away from her, and the shivering immediately gets worse, but then his body is pressed against hers, his arm circling her waist. She forgot how warm his body always is until it’s surrounding her, beginning to ease the tension that comes with trying to fight the shivering. His hand settles just above her hip, and she’s too tired to say anything when that tingling sensation returns again.

“Better?” he asks when her body is almost still.

“Better.”

By the time midnight arrives, she’s fast asleep, beginning the new year free of pain.

New Year’s Eve, 2020

“Dude.”

Scott jumps, startled by Stiles’s voice despite the whole werewolf hearing and the sensing body heat thing. “What?”

“You’ve got it bad.” Stiles thumps him on the shoulder and nods towards the place by the window where Malia sways gently back and forth. It comes so naturally, Scott doesn’t even think she knows she’s doing it. But Talia is cutting her first molar and brushes away any hand that tries to soothe her swollen gums. Braeden’s sleeping form on the couch would be evidence enough of the battle they’ve been waging, even without the dark circles that surround Derek’s eyes, but Aunt Malia apparently has the magic touch. The baby’s been asleep against her shoulder for almost an hour, and she hasn’t stopped swaying since.

“I get it,” Stiles continues without an invite. “Lydia picks up Talia, and I immediately want to bone her. Even though she is definitely Team No Kids and plans to end her career without ever being traded.”

“I don’t want to -” Scott sputters, stuck on that next word when he juxtaposes Stiles’s crude phrasing with the woman across the room. So instead, he focuses on the second half of what Stiles just said. “Lydia doesn’t want kids?”

Stiles shrugs his shoulders. “She’s only got three more years to finish that PhD before 30. Plus does the world really need little Stilinskis running around?”

Scott should point out that there’s plenty of time once they’re 30 to start a family, which is exactly what Derek did - he thinks it’s what Derek did - But then Lydia is suddenly there, circling her arm around Stiles’s waist. Scott tries not to pay attention to the way that Stiles’s arm wraps around her shoulders and pulls her closer, but even after all this time, it still feels sudden and new and unexpected to see the two of them together. “So what do you think?” she asks, cheek pressed against Stiles’s shoulder. “Should we leave?”

The pack assembled is smaller this year, with Liam off in Seattle visiting Hayden, Mason and Corey visiting Ethan and Jackson in London, and Jordan is off meeting his girlfriend’s family now that she’s confirmed she’s okay with the fact that he spends half of his time as a hellhound. Now it’s just the three of them standing in the kitchen, while Malia rocks the baby and a bleary-eyed Derek simply watches. Lydia probably has the right idea.

“Leave?” Stiles apparently disagrees. “It’s not even midnight.”

“It’s already midnight in New York,” Scott counters, but unlike past New Year’s Eves, the two of them both turn their heads to stare at them. “What?” he asks with a shrug of his shoulders. “It is!”

“Well, we live in California, dude,” Stiles says. Then he literally turns his body to face Lydia, hand falling to her waist, and once again, Scott can’t not notice. “You really want to go?”

“I think they could use some sleep.” Lydia says it as a suggestion, but she’s already starting to clean up in the kitchen. And when she reminds Stiles of her grandmother’s belief that you spend New Year’s the way you spend the rest of the year with a hint at how she plans to spend the rest of the night that’s just unsubtle enough to make Scott feel like he shouldn’t be witnessing it, Stiles is on board. Derek half-heartedly tells them to not worry about the mess, but mostly watches as they take care of the remains of their half-hearted party. By the time Stiles and Lydia are slipping out the door, Derek’s dozed off beside Braeden on the couch.

Scott plans to head out, too. There’s nothing left to clean up, and Talia doesn’t seem to like him much when she’s not teething. But he pauses with his coat on and his hand on the door, turning back around to where Malia’s still standing in front of the picture windows facing the woods, swaying back and forth with the baby. And Stiles still isn’t right, but he can’t leave just yet.

To avoid waking the sleeping parents, he crosses the room again. She must hear him because she turns away from the window, widening the arch of her swaying. “Hey,” he says once he’s close enough for her to hear his voice when it’s just above a whisper. “Stiles and Lydia left.”

“I know,” she deadpans. “I can hear you guys talking.”

Scott laughs. In the eight years he’s known her, he’s watched her become more comfortable in this body. She understands emotions now, and she’s better in most social situations. It may have taken her a little longer, but come May, she’ll have a degree. And yet, he might like this side of her the most, matter-of-fact and so much like the girl they found in the woods.

“Well, I was thinking about -” He motions towards the door in the same instant he realizes he’s not totally sure why he feels like he has to announce this to her. But now she’s just staring at him in a way that implies this statement is no less intelligent the last. “I mean, I guess, if you want,” he says before he can stop himself. “If you didn’t want to spend New Year’s alone…”

Malia’s gaze softens then, less of a judgement over his confessions and maybe something bordering on consideration. The baby chooses that moment, though, to turn her face, nuzzling against Malia’s shoulder before growing still again. Malia looks down at the baby, and by the time she looks back at Scott, her expression has changed. “She just fell asleep. I should make sure she’s really down for the night.”

“Right. Yeah. Of course.”

Scott knows he should take a step back and say his goodbye. He should survey the kitchen one last time to make sure everything is picked up, even though Lydia would never have left if something was out of place. He should go home and text her at midnight, just like he’ll text Stiles and Lydia, Liam and Hayden, Mason and Ethan and Jackson. Instead, he stands rooted to the floor mesmerized as she rubs the baby’s small back,sending faintly dark lines up her wrist when she pauses to check the baby’s pain level.

“You know,” he finally says instead of I’m gonna go. “You’re really good with her.”

Malia shrugs. “It’s not hard.” There it is, that matter-of-factness again. “And it’s nice. To have family.”

There’s an ache in his chest that’s quickly replaced by a warmth as her words resonate with him. A lot of times, a lot of New Year’s he’s wondered if maybe it was a mistake to take her from that life she had settled into. Tonight, he wants to pull her close. He wants to tell her how glad he is that she’s there. He wants to brush back that hair that’s fallen forward from behind her ear. He wants -

Outside, someone sets off a premature firework. Scott and Malia both jump. Talia begins to scream. Her parents wake up with a start on the couch. And just like that, the moment is gone.

“It’s okay, Tal,” Malia says as she begins to bounce the baby, resuming the endless laps she did around the living room before the baby fell asleep the first time. “I know, New Year’s is stupid.”

“The. Worst,” he echoes.

Scott ends up letting himself out.

New Year’s Eve, 2021

Lydia Martin’s parties are a status symbol in Beacon Hills. Malia’s only been a part of her life for ten years, and even she knows that. And in 2021, Lydia Martin throws the party to end all parties, then follows it up with her first act as Lydia Martin-Stilinski, and throws the smallest party she’s ever thrown to welcome in the first full year she’ll spend as a married woman.

The Martin-Stilinski house is full. Talia spends the first half of the night playing peek-a-boo with everyone before she eventually curls up beneath the Christmas tree and falls asleep. Jackson repeatedly chokes up telling the story of Ethan’s proposal, and Lydia elbows Stiles every time he snorts halfway through the story. Derek and Braeden show no signs of falling asleep before midnight. It’s the pack Malia never wanted but now can’t seem to live without, just like Beacon Hills is the place she tried to escape and the home that welcomed her back. But still, there’s something about all of the wedding planning and baby games and feeling of family that leaves her feeling… She’s not sure.

It’s almost midnight when Lydia starts pulling down champagne flutes and Derek offers to help pour. Malia takes the excitement over the impending countdown as her invitation to slip outside.

It’s colder than she realized, and she shivers as she sits down on the back steps. It’s louder here, closer to the city and Stiles’s FBI placement, than it is back in Beacon Hills. She welcomes it as she focuses on the sirens and the traffic and neighbors’ top 40s playlist instead of that feeling welling inside of her.

As much as she hates New Year’s, it might be good to see this one go. It was the year Stiles married Lydia, which still feels weird but okay. It was the year she took a job at Scott’s clinic as a practicing vet tech. But it was also the year that her dad died, just a week after Thanksgiving, leaving her the sole survivor of the Tate family. So maybe it’s better to forge ahead into whatever comes next.

The sound of the door opening behind her cuts through the neighbors’ music and her thoughts, and she turns her head to find Scott there. “It’s almost midnight,” he tells her as he gently eases the door closed, then drops down to sit beside her. “Although, I guess it was midnight in New York three hours ago.”

Malia manages a small smile at the memory that feels so recent and yet like it happened in another lifetime. “True.”

Scott’s silent. The music next door turns off, and somewhere in the back of her mind, it registers that midnight must be closer than she realized. Part of her wants to run, and part of her wants to reach for his hand instead. It feels like a kind of middle ground to just stay there, sitting beside him with her thigh brushing against his but otherwise a safe distance between them.

“So the good news,” he offers when she doesn’t have anything else to say, “is that it gets better. It’s hard at first. This one sucks. Next one might be worse. But eventually, it doesn’t feel like that anymore. You don’t forget, it just doesn’t -”

“-Hurt,” she finishes.

“Yeah. Right.”

He reaches over to squeeze her knee, and then his hand lingers there, gentle and warm. He’s always been this gentle and warm presence in a life that was cold and unforgiving so much of the time, at least at first. Most of the time, she forgets that Scott is also the tragic hero in all of this. That she joined his pack at its most fragile point, and without an alpha like him, it probably wouldn’t have lasted long enough for her to even set down roots.

Against her better judgement, she covers his hand with her own and lets him lace their fingers together. “But New Year’s still sucks, right?” she asks with a smirk.

“Oh,” he scoffs. “It’s the worst.”

She laughs and then he joins in and the better he’s just promised doesn’t feel quite as far-fetched. He laughs more now, she finds herself thinking. He’s more confident than the boy who sat beside her next to a pool. There’s still sometimes an awkward power dynamic between Scott and Derek, but Scott fills out that title of alpha better than he did when she first met him. And he’s happy. Genuinely, truly. happy. As the lone survivor of a love affair for the ages, he’s doing pretty okay. Maybe she’s willing to share that lone survivor title, too.

“Y’know,” he says as he brushes his shoulder against hers. “We’re gonna miss midnight.”

He’s watching her expectantly, big brown eyes focused only on her, even as someone asks Where’s Scott? and What about Malia? a few yards behind them. She knows he hears it, too, but neither of them react.

“It’s still midnight out here,” she responds instead.

His hand stays woven with her as the countdown begins in the house behind them. There’s a nervous energy building inside of her, some wild animal trapped in her chest that might try to fight its way free at a moment’s notice. She’s back to wanting to run, but then he gives her hand a squeeze, and it at least takes the edge off.

Next door, there’s a collective cheer that drowns out the family waiting for them inside. She feels sick to her stomach, but she tries to focus on his palm against her own instead.

Gently, he reaches over to brush her hair back behind her ear where it’s fallen forward. “Happy New Year, Malia.”

“Happy New Year, Scott.”

And then he leans forward and kisses her. And if this is what it feels like to forge ahead into uncharted territory, she’s ready.

New Year’s Eve, 2023

For the first time in Scott’s recent memory, it’s a white New Year’s Eve in California. There’s literally a dusting that covers the grass and throws most of the state into a frenzy. It’s probably the first time in Malia’s life as a human that there’s been this much snow. And they miss the entire thing.

It’s late by the time the midwife has packed up her things and ventured back out into what the news referred to as the storm of the century. The pack won’t stop by until tomorrow, when there’s no longer a literal State of Emergency declared statewide. And in a moment, it becomes just the three of them: Malia, Scott, and all six pounds eight ounces of Tate McCall curled up against Scott’s chest.

His birth is as planned as the snow outside, having come nearly four weeks early, which is fitting when considering what a surprise his conception had been. But Scott can’t remember a time he felt more content, laying beside his girlfriend with his son sleeping soundly against his heart. It’s not the worst way to usher out the old and in the new.

Malia rolls gently onto her side, reaching out to run her hand over the soft mess of dark hair that covers the baby’s head, and Scott can only shake his head. “How are you even still awake?”

“I’m not tired.” He knows that’s a lie. Or if it’s not a lie, it’s the lingering adrenaline talking. He did a fraction of the work, and he still feels like he waged a war over the course of the past 22 hours. Reaching over now, he gently cups her elbow and sucks in a breath when he feels her pain shooting down his thighs, giving him just a taste of how sore she is. That alone should be enough to knock her out, and yet here she is, insisting on lying awake with them. He thinks she’s incredible.

“You should sleep,” she tries to argue instead.

“What did I even do?”

“You took my pain the whole time. Don’t even argue,” she says as she points in his direction. “I know you did.”

“Then how come you didn’t stop me?”

“It felt good.” They both start laughing until her body lets her know that laughter is not her friend, and she groans softly.

“Sorry,” Scott is quick to say. The baby squirms on his chest, and he can almost feel the tension as she holds her breath alongside him, but then the baby simply stops without ever waking up. “Seriously though, you should sleep while he’ll let us. It’s already almost midnight.”

Her eyes close like she might just take his advice, but she smiles sleepily. “It’s already midnight in New York.”

“And I guess New Year’s is stupid anyways, huh?”

Malia opens her eyes to look back over at the baby, whose birthday will now forever coincide with the national holiday. Earlier, when he had texted out the baby’s stats, Stiles had responded that if you were gonna have to share your birthday, you could’ve at least been the first baby of the New Year, which Tate fell short of by a few hours, but Scott disagreed. It had to feel good to feel like everyone was celebrating along with you. Malia reaches for his tiny hand now, and Scott watches as, even in sleep, the baby responds by holding onto her finger like it’s a lifeline. “I don’t know,” she finally admits. “It might not be that terrible.”

“Oh?” Scott asks, eyebrow raised in disbelief. “It’s not the worst?”

She hesitates, then shakes her head. “It might kind of be the best.”

As she begins to lose the battle and her eyes drift shut again, Scott can’t help but think, Yeah. This is kind of the best.

#teen wolf #scalia #stydia #draeden #scott mccall #malia tate #scoliasecretsanta #my fic

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scoliasecretsanta · 6 years

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Scolia Secret Santa - What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

for: @allisonscott

title: What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve? word count: 7,431 genre: angst/fluff author’s note: I wanted to give you a slow-build, friends-to-lovers kind of thing, so I hope you enjoy these snapshots of NYEs over the course of twelve years. :)

New Year’s Eve, 2011

Lydia Martin’s parties are a status symbol in Beacon Hills. You’re not someone unless you can somehow score an invite, and nothing rivals her New Year’s Eve party. Two years ago, Scott had spent New Year’s binge watching Marvel movies with his mom and Stiles, listening to Stiles volley between lamenting their low, low status and inventing possible scenarios of what was unfolding at the party across town. This year, Scott wanders that same party, followed by the ghost of a girl he’s not quite ready to shake and mentally curses Lydia Martin and her parties for bringing Allison Argent into his life.

His initial reaction is to turn around and head back inside. Malia’s become a staple lately, a siamese twin glued to Stiles’s side, but Scott still doesn’t feel like he knows her - and he’s not sure he wants to. (Stiles’s survivor guilt has him throwing himself into saving someone else while Scott’s has him certain he shouldn’t be allowed to lead a pack.) But then he makes eye contact with her, and he can’t just slip back inside.

“It’s almost midnight,” he says instead as he lingers in that spot just outside the door. He silently wills her to give up her spot and go join the party’s impending countdown.

She shrugs instead. “It was midnight three hours ago in New York.”

“Okay, true,” he concedes, even as his body wants to rebel. He forces himself to say it, the same way he forces himself to stand there when what he really wanted was to be alone. “Where’s Stiles?”

“Asleep.”

“Asleep?”

Malia nods. She doesn’t offer any more information at first. Instead, she gazes out over the pool for a long, silent minute before she finally says, “He still smells like it.”

“You know, you’re gonna miss it.” Malia just keeps staring at him until he finally elaborates. “Midnight. Here, in California.”

“I don’t care.”

First, though, he presses his palms against the mosaiced walkway and leans back so he can see her face. “Do you remember New Year’s? From before?”

She shoots him a look that’s definitely more furious half-animal than scared half-girl and bares her teeth.

Scott doesn’t recoil. In his head, he can see Stiles placing a gentle, albeit poorly timed, hand on her shoulder as he reminds her Not at friends. Not at people period. But Scott doesn’t say anything. Baring your teeth at the new year feels somehow appropriate tonight. He also doesn’t expect her to tell him anything else, which is why he’s surprised when she talks again.

“The last New Year’s I remember, my dad told me it was gonna be my year. Then three months later, I killed my mom and my sister.”

Again, Stiles’s voice is there in the back of his head, reminding him that they need to keep telling her it wasn’t her fault. But Scott pushes it away. The heaviness in his own heart says guilt doesn’t work that way. Instead, he lays back in the cold grass, trying to ignore the way the music has stopped. The way people are louder, more excited. He can’t get his hands to move the right way to check the time on his phone again, though, so he folds them under his head.

“New Year’s is stupid.”

“The worst.”

Happy New Year! the collective voices inside cheer, and his heart lodges itself in the back of his throat, threatening to choke him.

“It’s midnight,” Malia sighs beside him.

Her words come back to him without any conscious effort on his part, and his throat starts to feel like it might not close up after all. “It was midnight three hours ago in New York.”

New Year’s Eve/Day, 2013

Paris has been good for her. Scott, Stiles, Lydia, even Derek got to just be for parts of high school. They all had memories of parties, dances, first dates, and friday night games. And (at least by the time she settled into her new skin) Malia had berserkers and dread doctors and a homicidal mom for good measure. But in Paris, she gets to just be. There’s dance clubs and boys with names she sometimes can’t pronounce and liquor laced with wolfsbane once she finds a pack Derek gives her the name of. And it’s everything she wanted it to be.

I don’t know what time it is there, but it’s midnight in New York, so I think it’s the new year there?

It’s the first time it dawns on her that it is indeed the New Year, and she’s about to tell him as much when the … appears on the screen to let her know that he’s typing again.

Stiles just pointed out that I could’ve Googled that. So it’s six there.

He wants you to know he had to tell me cause he’s an asshole.

Anyways, Happy New Year.

Happy New Year, she writes and then deletes it. New Year’s is stupid, she writes back instead.

She waits for his … to appear again, but it doesn’t. Derek texts her to wish her a Happy New Year, though, and so does Stiles, so she responds to both of them before she comes back to her message thread with Scott. Scrolling back up, she reads through their texts that stop abruptly on Christmas, right around the time she told him her plan out on Derek’s fire escape. He and Lydia had deferred for a semester while they fought a literal war, but they planned to leave Beacon Hills behind after the holiday. And Malia had still wanted her time to just be, to figure out who she was when she wasn’t Stiles’s girlfriend or Peter Hale’s daughter.

But Scott hadn’t understood, partly because they were still in the middle of… something. He never sat her down the way Stiles had, back when he had defined the word girlfriend for her and then panicked when she substituted it for mate, but they had spent a lot of time together. His mom started expecting her to wander downstairs in the morning after she sat them down to remind them that they both had goals for the future that a diaper bag doesn’t fit into (Malia didn’t get it). But Scott planned to leave, and Malia planned to do the same. And now, things had been weird.

She makes it to four days before she left when her screen suddenly jumps on its own, bringing her back down to his newest message: The worst.

Malia feels that same tug at her heart as she pictures him not in Derek’s loft but laying beside her in the grass instead. Younger, but somehow more worn. Maybe a little broken.

She’s not sure what else to say, but his … saves her again, and then is replaced by his next message: How’s 2014?

Lonely is the first word that comes to mind, even though Paul’s arm is still thrown around her waist. Kind of the same, she says instead.

Cool.

It’s quick and short. She pictures him setting his phone back down or pocketing it again, then joining back in the conversation about Braeden’s latest mission or Stiles’s weird roommate who can’t sleep with the closet door closed. Time doesn’t really matter to her and time zones still make no sense, but for a minute, she can feel the distance between them now that they’re living in two different countries and two different years.

Before she can stop herself, she types out I miss you.

Her finger hovers over send for just a half second too long, and then, just when she’s about to press it, Paul stirs beside her, tugging her closer in his half-asleep state.

“What time is it?” he mumbles as he buries his face against the back of her neck. His stubble rubs against her skin in a way that’s nothing like Scott.

“A little after six.”

“ ‘S early.”

“Not that early,” she argues as she sets her phone back down on the floor and flips over on the mattress so that his lips meet hers instead of the back of her neck.

A few hours later, she finds her text to Scott, still waiting to be sent. She deletes it instead and doesn’t text him again until they’re both in the same year and the same country.

New Year’s Eve, 2015 Her name is Bri. He meets her in a Starbucks on a Friday night when he’s claimed a secluded table in the corner where he won’t have to listen to his roommate fight with his girlfriend for the ninth - ninth - time this week, and she asks to take the other half of the table. Six months later, she’s settled into the apartment he started renting after his roommate and his now ex got into fight #10, and she’s met his mom. But he still hasn’t told her that he moonlights as a supernatural creature. Which makes the holidays… awkward.

Thank god Stiles and Lydia are the planners Scott never wanted to be, because they listen to his panicked phone call and then solve the dilemma he thought had been the realization that she doesn’t know he’s a part of a freaking pack of animals. Their official unofficial New Year’s get together is moved to the McCall house where there’s significantly less weird paraphernalia if you don’t know that werewolves exist. Liam makes a joke about Scott flashing his eyes that makes Bri stare at him just a little too long, and Derek accidentally says the word pack a little too loudly when he’s talking to Mason at one point. And when Bri asks about Braeden’s scar, Scott is so caught off guard, he can’t think of anything at all to say and just shrugs a silent I don’t know. But other than that, they might actually make it through this holiday unscathed.

“Whoa. Sorry,” he says, even as she’s shaking her head with a, “I didn’t know you were there.”

“Yeah. Same.”

“Cold.”

“Yeah? Isn’t it midnight there already? Like New York?” There’s a roll of her eyes, and he suddenly remembers the time their Physics teacher called her out and Stiles had tried to argue she was blinking with style. She may be traveling the country to try to learn more about what it means to be a half human, but she has definitely mastered the art of the eye roll. She pushes herself off of the counter, too, and pretends to busy herself with the Keurig on the opposite side of the room, but Scott doesn’t give up so easily. “Derek says there’s a whole family of werecoyotes up there.”

“That’s a different pack,” she says at the same instant he remembers that was Minnesota, not Michigan.

“Oh. Yeah. Right.”

“Right,” Malia echoes. The Keurig buzzes loudly, the smell of coffee fills the room. It’s almost enough to cover up the scene of her sudden frustration.

“Well, it’s good to see you,” he says. She doesn’t even turn around. And he’s more hurt than indignant about whatever this is. So he decides to just let it go. “I guess I’ll - “

“Hey! There you are.”

At the sound of another person’s voice, Malia finally does turn around. Just before he turns to see Bri, too, Scott watches her expression change to match Michigan’s winter.

“Bri,” he announces as he gestures between the two girls. “This is Malia. Malia, Bri.”

Bri is bubbly and outgoing. She thrives on human contact and relationships and social situations. She’s been talking about meeting his friends for weeks. She even got Lydia to laugh at her joke, albeit at Scott’s expense, earlier tonight. She’s kind of the antithesis of Malia, and, as she squares her shoulders, Malia seems determined to prove it.

“Hi,” Bri greets her with a tiny wave of her hand. “Happy New Year. It’s nice to finally meet you. Scott’s told me so much about you.”

Malia rolls her eyes sky high a second time as she strides right past Bri. “New Year’s is stupid.”

“Yeah,” Scott agrees because he doesn’t know what else to say. “It’s kind of the worst.” But he hasn’t even finished talking by the time the door is swinging behind her.

It takes a few months for their relationship to fizzle out. He never does tell her about the werewolf thing. By next New Year’s, Bri is a distant memory.

New Year’s Eve, 2017

There’s a throbbing in the back of her head. That’s her first coherent thought before she even opens her eyes. Then she tries to turn over, and cries out as pain shoots up her side.

“Malia?”

“Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.”

“What happened?” she finally asks.

“A hunter,” he sighs as he leans forward in the chair to rest his elbows on his knees. She watches, almost cross-eyed, as he reaches out to brush her hair back behind her ear with a level of gentleness that she doesn’t associate with Scott. “Derek said you guys would track them down when you heard more from Braeden’s contact, but you didn’t want to wait. So you went by yourself. They shot you.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Lia, c’mon. I just told you. You were shot.”

“I’ve been shot,” she argues as she tries again to ignore the pain and sit up.

“Is it still there?”

He drops his hand to his side instead, but doesn’t move from his place beside her bed. The fog in her head is starting to clear enough now that she remembers bits and pieces. The crunch of a second set of footsteps in the woods, the suddenness of the pain as it bloomed just above her hip, the relief that came after she decided to stop fighting and just let her eyes close. But Scott is nowhere in her memories of that night. He was supposed to be at Derek’s tonight. She was supposed to be at Derek’s too, she had just planned to show up late. She has no idea what time it is, but it has to be close to midnight, if it hasn’t passed already.

Her eye’s narrow in Scott’s direction as it finally clicks. “Why are you here?”

He scoffs. “Because you were shot.”

“But how did you know I was here?”

Oh.

“Well, I’m fine,” she says, knowing Lydia would tell her to say thank you. “You can go.”

“C’mon, Malia. I’m not gonna go.” He settles back down on the edge of the chair like that proves it.

“But it’s New Year’s Eve. It’s almost midnight.”

“And?”

“And you should be with the pack.”

“So now you’re not in my pack anymore?” he asks with a teasing smile. “Plus, it’s already midnight in New York.”

“New Year’s is stupid,” he echoes, and, despite herself, there’s a warmth that settles in the pit of her stomach - or maybe it’s just the painkillers.

Scott watches her expectantly until she finally relents with a roll of her eyes. “The worst.”

Whatever they gave her for the pain is good and strong and her head is still full of clouds. She might fall asleep again, or maybe she just starts to daze, but the next thing she knows, she’s shivering so hard, she can hear the sound of her own teeth chattering. And each violent shake rattles her sore side where they had to take her apart to find the bullet.

“It’s okay,” Scott says, and she realizes then that he got up again, pulling the thin hospital blankets up to her chin. “Your body’s just fighting the anesthesia. Is that better?”

The blankets don’t do anything to stop her shiver, but she still nods as she says, “Fine.”

He doesn’t buy it, sighing through his nose. “Here,” he says as he begins to slide off the jacket he’s still wearing, laying it over the arm of his chair.

“Scott…”

“Better?” he asks when her body is almost still.

“Better.”

By the time midnight arrives, she’s fast asleep, beginning the new year free of pain.

New Year’s Eve, 2020

“Dude.”

Scott jumps, startled by Stiles’s voice despite the whole werewolf hearing and the sensing body heat thing. “What?”

Stiles shrugs his shoulders. “She’s only got three more years to finish that PhD before 30. Plus does the world really need little Stilinskis running around?”

Scott should point out that there’s plenty of time once they’re 30 to start a family, which is exactly what Derek did - he thinks it’s what Derek did - But then Lydia is suddenly there, circling her arm around Stiles’s waist. Scott tries not to pay attention to the way that Stiles’s arm wraps around her shoulders and pulls her closer, but even after all this time, it still feels sudden and new and unexpected to see the two of them together. “So what do you think?” she asks, cheek pressed against Stiles’s shoulder. “Should we leave?”

“Leave?” Stiles apparently disagrees. “It’s not even midnight.”

“Well, we live in California, dude,” Stiles says. Then he literally turns his body to face Lydia, hand falling to her waist, and once again, Scott can’t not notice. “You really want to go?”

“I know,” she deadpans. “I can hear you guys talking.”

“Right. Yeah. Of course.”

“You know,” he finally says instead of I’m gonna go. “You’re really good with her.”

Malia shrugs. “It’s not hard.” There it is, that matter-of-factness again. “And it’s nice. To have family.”

Outside, someone sets off a premature firework. Scott and Malia both jump. Talia begins to scream. Her parents wake up with a start on the couch. And just like that, the moment is gone.

“The. Worst,” he echoes.

Scott ends up letting himself out.

New Year’s Eve, 2021

Lydia Martin’s parties are a status symbol in Beacon Hills. Malia’s only been a part of her life for ten years, and even she knows that. And in 2021, Lydia Martin throws the party to end all parties, then follows it up with her first act as Lydia Martin-Stilinski, and throws the smallest party she’s ever thrown to welcome in the first full year she’ll spend as a married woman.

It’s almost midnight when Lydia starts pulling down champagne flutes and Derek offers to help pour. Malia takes the excitement over the impending countdown as her invitation to slip outside.

Malia manages a small smile at the memory that feels so recent and yet like it happened in another lifetime. “True.”

“-Hurt,” she finishes.

“Yeah. Right.”

Against her better judgement, she covers his hand with her own and lets him lace their fingers together. “But New Year’s still sucks, right?” she asks with a smirk.

“Oh,” he scoffs. “It’s the worst.”

She laughs and then he joins in and the better he’s just promised doesn’t feel quite as far-fetched. He laughs more now, she finds herself thinking. He’s more confident than the boy who sat beside her next to a pool. There’s still sometimes an awkward power dynamic between Scott and Derek, but Scott fills out that title of alpha better than he did when she first met him. And he’s happy. Genuinely, truly. happy. As the lone survivor of a love affair for the ages, he’s doing pretty okay. Maybe she’s willing to share that lone survivor title, too.

“Y’know,” he says as he brushes his shoulder against hers. “We’re gonna miss midnight.”

He’s watching her expectantly, big brown eyes focused only on her, even as someone asks Where’s Scott? and What about Malia? a few yards behind them. She knows he hears it, too, but neither of them react.

“It’s still midnight out here,” she responds instead.

Next door, there’s a collective cheer that drowns out the family waiting for them inside. She feels sick to her stomach, but she tries to focus on his palm against her own instead.

Gently, he reaches over to brush her hair back behind her ear where it’s fallen forward. “Happy New Year, Malia.”

“Happy New Year, Scott.”

And then he leans forward and kisses her. And if this is what it feels like to forge ahead into uncharted territory, she’s ready.

New Year’s Eve, 2023

It’s late by the time the midwife has packed up her things and ventured back out into what the news referred to as the storm of the century. The pack won’t stop by until tomorrow, when there’s no longer a literal State of Emergency declared statewide. And in a moment, it becomes just the three of them: Malia, Scott, and all six pounds eight ounces of Tate McCall curled up against Scott’s chest.

Malia rolls gently onto her side, reaching out to run her hand over the soft mess of dark hair that covers the baby’s head, and Scott can only shake his head. “How are you even still awake?”

“I’m not tired.” He knows that’s a lie. Or if it’s not a lie, it’s the lingering adrenaline talking. He did a fraction of the work, and he still feels like he waged a war over the course of the past 22 hours. Reaching over now, he gently cups her elbow and sucks in a breath when he feels her pain shooting down his thighs, giving him just a taste of how source she is. That alone should be enough to knock her out, and yet here she is, insisting on lying awake with them. He thinks she’s incredible.

“You should sleep,” she tries to argue instead.

“What did I even do?”

“You took my pain the whole time. Don’t even argue,” she says as she points in his direction. “I know you did.”

“Then how come you didn’t stop me?”

“It felt good.” They both start laughing until her body lets her know that laughter is not her friend, and she groans softly.

Her eyes close like she might just take his advice, but she smiles sleepily. “It’s already midnight in New York.”

“And I guess New Year’s is stupid anyways, huh?”

Malia opens her eyes to look back over at the baby, whose birthday will now forever coincide with the national holiday. Earlier, when he had texted out the baby’s stats, Stiles had responded that if you were gonna have to share your birthday, you could’ve at least been the first baby of the New Year, which Tate fell short of by a few hours, but Scott disagreed. It had to feel good to feel like everyone was celebrating along with you. Malia reaches for his tiny had now, and Scott watches as, even in sleep, the baby responds by holding onto her finger like it’s a lifeline. “I don’t know,” she finally admits. “It might not be

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