Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Truth be told, jail isn't quite where Stiles had planned to spend the tail end of winter, but he's nothing if not adaptable.

The whole thing is almost impressive, really. He might have spared a compliment to whoever is behind it if the ploy hadn't been aimed straight at him. The spoofed texts, the doctored camera time, the cloned car plates, even ballistics points straight at him since the report about his stolen off-duty pistol also went mysteriously missing. Someone out there really wanted him out of their way, and got exactly that.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who did it, at least in a broad sort of way, but proving it in a court of law is another thing entirely, especially when he's not quite sure how deep the whole operation runs, and even more after the FBI's legal team washed their hands off him like cutting their losses is worth more than investing a little time and money into proving one of their agents didn't murder the key witness to the case he's been working on for nearly a full year.

It makes him wonder if the hunters have someone on the inside, though the thought rings as paranoid even to him. It unfortunately makes sense that they wouldn't offer him legal representation, he's only been in the Joint Terrorism Task Force for a few years — fished straight from the academy thanks to agent Whitford, bless her tea-loving heart — and doesn't have the kind of work history that would lend his innocence enough credibility, not with every evidence against him handed to them in a silver platter.

Even more unfortunately, he didn't make bail, not with the charges being witness tampering resulting in death coupled with destruction of evidence, and especially given his well-documented history of poking his nose where it doesn't technically belong. The prosecution argued that he would likely attempt to interfere with his own case, which… well, is likely true, but he wishes they hadn't said it.

If that wasn't bad enough, the system apparently kept showing no available beds in the usual DC contract jails whenever the Marshal Service enquired about his placement, which means he ends up at a state prison by the end of the week. Stiles has his doubts about the legitimacy of the overcrowding claims, but there's very little to be done about it either way.

Millburn Correctional Facility looks as intimidating as every other jail he's seen, except it's amplified by the fact that he's being marched into it as an inmate this time. He doesn't show it, of course. It's bad enough to be a white twenty-five-year-old federal agent — the latter of which is thankfully not common knowledge — in a state prison where the best he can hope for is that his future cellmate has a minor felony instead of a murder charge to match his own.

He's not exactly holding his breath for it.

Medical goes by with minimal fuss, though the same can't be said about the PREA — standing for Prison Rape Elimination Act — questions, which mostly fill him with dread at a prospect he hadn't even considered panicking about yet. They offer him protective custody, but he waves it off. The isolation of it, too likely to be reminiscent of Eichen House for his comfort, would drive him to actual homicide — or worse — much faster than trying his luck with the general population. Stiles resigns himself to sharing a living space with the kind of people he's been working to put behind bars for the foreseeable future and signs the waiver they give him at his refusal.

He goes through the motions of being admitted into the prison with the kind of detachment he's learned to project in hostile environments, keeping his head down — thankfully much easier done now than in his teenage years — and trying not to fidget under the scrutiny of the new inmates who had arrived with him, all of which look just as hostile as he'd assumed they would. The thought of sharing a cell with any of them tells him he should be prepared for many sleepless nights, and is also what finally flips a switch in his mind about the whole incarceration issue, prompting a decision he'd been teetering on for a while.

Stiles hadn't really planned on using his abilities at first, but no plan survives contact with the enemy.

He won't be breaking his rules, of course. They're there to make sure he doesn't feel like he did back in Beacon Hills ever again, to assure him that he's not the fox, even if some of it latched onto his spark and stayed behind like so much contaminated residue — no, not that, he's not supposed to think about it like it's something tainting him, his therapist said so. Like pocket change, then. Leftover power that a thousand-years-old spirit barely noticed was left behind, but that apparently, in contact with his no longer suppressed potential — due to the end of the possession —, ignited that spark Deaton had mentioned once before into a steady burning flame.

So, yeah, he should probably get a shirt saying “I got possessed by a japanese demon and all I got were these lousy powers”.

Well, the nogitsune leftovers are lousy, anyways. The whole ‘ignited spark’ part of the deal is a lot cooler, at least in comparison. The fox's piece lets him feed on strife, chaos and fear just like the nogitsune itself — and hadn't that been a panic attack and a half when he figured it out — and he can't possess other people like it did, thankfully, but the ability to create illusions and increased strength, speed, agility, reflexes and healing factor did stay behind, slowly increasing as he passively fed on the chaos that always surrounded him in Beacon Hills until he finally couldn't deny that something had changed.

His denial skills are off the charts, so it definitely took a while.

Actually, it took one of his fellow FBI interns getting shot. He'd managed to keep swimming on that river in Egypt even after accidentally putting a fork inside his toaster to grab a stubborn piece of bread and not even feeling the electric shock, but It's kind of hard to deny the change when you accidentally pain-drain a friend and can see blackened veins visibly crawling up your arms. Good thing Yasmin didn't remember anything when he visited her in the hospital, because that sure would have been a doozy to explain.

His therapist — a non-practicing psychic named Gloria who takes clients from all walks of life, supernatural or otherwise — had a field day with that one. Hell, she had a field month, but somehow managed to coach him into accepting that these changes were there to stay and there was nothing he could do about it but choose how he reacts to it. Whether they would control him, or the other way around.

Evidently, he settles on the latter.

Stiles had been glad to be away from the pack at the time. Figuring things out on his own in DC was much easier than if he had to worry about their reactions to exactly what sort of power had been left behind in his body. He'd dived into what he does best — research — and wrangled the leftover abilities into submission one at a time. Not to say it was without trial and error — sometimes to either hilarious or terrifying degrees — but figuring things out is what he does, and he wasn't about to let a measly thing like trauma stop him.

Gloria threw a handful of macadamia nuts at him when he told her that, but it was still worth it.

Telling the pack, in the end, had been harder than he'd expected but went better than he could have hoped. It helped that half the current pack hadn't even been around for the whole dark kitsune debacle, but Scott had displayed some much appreciated signs of growing up and decided to trust Stiles’ word that he had a handle on it instead of seeing the nogitsune's leftover powers as a threat. Peter had looked thrilled, which was always unnerving, and Derek- well, he wasn't exactly around to give an opinion either way. Alec had asked him for a demo of his powers, and that was that.

Lydia, who'd been the first to hear about it before dragging him to Gloria's doorstep, graciously refrained from saying an ‘I told you so’.

Also, it turns out that he didn't quite get a whole kitsune aura out of it, but he definitely got something. Scott called it a cloak, as if a minor version of such aura had decided to coat his skin. Liam said he looked like the enemy outline in a videogame if the color options included dark purple, which definitely helped him visualize better than ‘purple, kind of shiny’, and he didn't quite get the hang of it back then, but now he can control exactly when said aura appears and what sort of feeling it evokes on those around him.

That's probably what's going to help him the most in prison, he thinks during the walk to the cell. Nothing better to keep trouble away than an aura that spells ‘FUCK OFF’ in capital letters to everyone in a five foot radius.

Stiles catalogs the entrances and exits they walk by, eyes finding every camera like memorizing their positions is a matter of life and death — as far as he knows, it could very well be — and gaze flickering from officers to inmates every now and then, keeping track of their disposition in a spot of hypervigilance he feels is warranted. So focused on canvasing the environment, he nearly stumbles when they suddenly stop in front of the cells.

An officer whose name he didn't catch — a middle-aged white man with a mustache and a beer belly who couldn't look more like he'd rather be anywhere else — keys the door of cell C-214 and Stiles commits the number to mind.

The inside of the cell isn't any more impressive than the outside: two bunks, mesh shelves, toilet and sink combo. There's a vent at three o'clock in the furthest corner of the top bed, and a man already on the bottom bunk.

“Warfield, you're doubled again.” The officer says, motioning him into the cell. “Stilinski, top bunk.”

Warfield looks to be around his mid-thirties, with buzzed dyed-looking blond hair, a scarred eyebrow, tired brown eyes, an uneven stubble, shoulders that say he's been to the prison gym and a softer middle that adds he hasn't returned there quite enough times. Stiles clocks the tattoos during his quick once-over: a crude dice on the right forearm, initials over the left thumb. Half-sprawled on the bottom bunk, he's watching the officer's key ring more than Stiles himself.

He slips in before the officer loses his patience, dropping his stuff — the standard issue inmate starter pack of a set of clothes, shower shoes, bedclothes and toiletries — on top of his assigned bunk bed right as the cell door closes again.

There's a small impulse to introduce himself, and he manages to hold on to it for the few minutes it takes him to tidy up the bed and hide his toiletries under the mattress while the rest is tucked into the rolled-up blanket he plans to use as a makeshift pillow.

“I'm Stiles,” He offers eventually, once there's nothing else to be done and he's climbed up to his bunk.

A beat, then a reply. “Eddie,” a slightly raspy voice responds, then falls completely silent again.

Fair enough, it's not like he's dying for whatever passes for small talk in prison.

Only a few minutes in — or what he assumes are a few minutes, wishing they had a clock somewhere in the vicinity —, a correctional officer's voice calls “Count!” and Stiles nearly jumps out of his skin, feeling high-strung from the silence of the cell even with another person in it. Warfield — Eddie — doesn't look at him, just drags himself up and goes to stand at the door window.

Stiles drops the comb he'd been fidgeting with on the top bunk and slides back down, following his cellmate's example. The CO walks the rail, glancing at each cell. He stops at theirs, visually confirms ‘two’, and marks it on a metal clipboard. They keep standing there as he moves on, long enough for Stiles to lose track of time amidst metal ticks, radio hisses and shoe scrapes until an overhead call sets them free and sends them off to dinner. It makes something drop in his stomach, the realization that this is his life now.

It's gonna be a long few months.

Chapter Text

It's only when light starts seeping into the corridor outside that Stiles realizes he hasn't slept a wink.

Dinner had been mostly uneventful. He'd kept to himself, let the stares slide right off him as he mapped out the chow hall — cameras, exits, guard posts — and sat at the emptiest table he could find. He knew that peace wouldn't last, that the first night was probably as quiet as it was because everyone was getting the measure of the new arrivals, but he was glad for it anyway.

He'd clocked a few faces that stood out, the movement patterns — who got avoided, who moved tables more often, who held court and had people cluster around them — clicking inside his mind with the habit of someone who's been people watching since lunch started to be eaten in the school cafeteria. There was a lot of segregation, with white inmates being a clear minority, though he can't tell if it's by design or simply tier distribution — they were all in C tier, and he had no knowledge of the other two since outings are staggered for better crowd control.

Stiles had avoided looking at either of the seemingly established groups, eaten his grub — which honestly wasn't as bad as he'd have thought, pretty much a reminder of school cafeteria food but blander — and kept his head down all the way back once meal time ended and they were escorted back to their cells for the final count of the day.

Eddie had dropped onto his bunk, muttered a “don't be fucking noisy,” and promptly conked out.

Pleasant fellow.

Locked in, the tier had gone flat. For a while it was just the building: heat through the vents, a pipe knock, the buzz of the hall light. Down the run, a snore started, stopped, started. Boots passed sometime during the night — key jingles, a quick flashlight across the hall, radio hisses — then moved on. Water ran two cells over, a toilet flushed, plastic cup hit metal with a clack. A whisper bled through the vent he couldn’t catch, a gate buzzed and thumped somewhere distant, and he stayed wide awake, shoes still on, one hand outside the blanket and breathing in for four and out for six like it was his job.

Stiles blinks for a little too long, wondering how long until the morning count, and ignores the slight tingle under his skin that tells him exactly why he doesn't feel anywhere close to as tired as he should be after almost two days of no sleep. He feeds on pain and strife, after all.

Prison is pretty much an all-you-can-eat buffet.

05:30 finally came with the shout of “Count!” — something he only knew from having received a schedule, since no clocks had materialized overnight — and he was already at the door.

Breakfast finds him at another empty corner table, sitting with his back to the wall to lower the ways the universe can screw him over during the meal. It's the safe choice, or as safe as it gets for him at least.

In prison, unfortunately, nothing stays unclaimed for long.

A tray slams down across from him, and when he looks up, two men are standing there: one broad and bald with a swastika faded on his neck, the other built like a brick wall and eyes like shark glass. Frazier and Duerson, if his recall from last night’s whispers is right. They'd changed tables a noticeable amount of times the night before, and been avoided just as much.

Some sort of enforcers then, Stiles deduces. That's just his luck.

“New kid,” Frazier greets, voice thick with amusement. “You got balls sitting here.”

Stiles keeps his tone level, in a way that won't sound like he's picking a fight but isn't anywhere near meek. “Didn’t see a sign.”

Duerson grins, flashing a gold tooth like some sort of generic TV mobster. “You don’t need a sign, just eyes. That’s our table.”

He could move. He could make this easy. But if there’s a thing he's learned about bullies over the years, it's that they don’t stop when you step back, only when they decide you’re not a fun chew toy.

“I’ll finish quick,” Stiles says, diplomatic. He breaks off a piece of biscuit and eats it, deliberately slow. “You won’t even notice me.”

Duerson leans forward, his grin widening, and the kind of attention he's paying Stiles shifts by an uncomfortable degree. “Oh, we noticed.”

He spots the guard at the front talking to someone, his attention diverted. No backup eyes here, then. Stiles feels that familiar hum under his skin again, the pulse that isn’t adrenaline — it’s hunger, awareness, something older. He takes one breath in for four, out for six, and then he lets it slip.

Not much, just enough.

The light around him seems to tilt half a shade too cool. His stillness sharpens until it feels like the space itself is listening. Frazier’s smirk falters first, then Duerson’s fingers twitch against the table. They can’t name what is wrong, but it’s wrong all the same — like a deer realizing it’s already in a snare.

Stiles lifts his gaze, eyes steady, voice mild. “You done?” He asks. It’s not a threat, just quiet certainty, wrapped in that pulse of wrong that leaks through the seams.

Duerson clears his throat. “Yeah,” he mutters, picking up his tray. “Yeah, we’re done.”

Frazier hesitates a beat longer, then scoffs — too loud, too fake — and follows. The air warms back up when they leave, and the sounds of trays and chatter fill the vacuum again.

Stiles finishes his biscuit, and thinks maybe he'll try another table tomorrow.

The dayroom is a rectangle of hard surfaces: bolted metal tables, a bulletin board scabbed over with tape and paper, a bank of scratched phones, fluorescent lights humming loud enough for Stiles to file it as its own entity. A corrections officer leans at the podium with a clipboard and a don't-start-something-I'll-have-to-finish voice.

Work crews peel off through a side gate — laundry whites, kitchen caps, a porter squad with brooms and a squeaky cart — and what’s left is the floaters like him, unassigned, new, injured, or just unlucky. The temperature of the room drops a few degrees when part of the predators leave to be productive elsewhere.

It’s not safe, exactly. Just… thinner.

Stiles stops by the bulletin board long enough to take a one-page GED orientation flyer, then picks the end table by the call-out board. Not the chair that blocks the path — that would just invite shoulders — but the one that keeps the board in his periphery. Back to a cinderblock wall, clear sightline to the phones, the officer’s podium, and the two exits. He sits, puts his hands where everyone can see them, and makes a show of reading the flyer while really watching the room move around him.

He doesn’t know most names, not yet. Just the two from last night’s whispers and this morning's sort-of introduction  — Frazier and Duerson, the white-power muscle — and the one who holds court like a deal wearing a face, Shaw. Everybody else is categories and edges and habits he has yet to learn, but will memorize by the end of next week, just in case.

Two tables over sits one of the guys from the transport van — thin, sunburned, a jaw set too hard — picks a bad chair. Three locals drift in with the lazy certainty of ownership and start levying a ‘seat tax’ or whatever they call what they feel like the world owes them for the situation they got themselves into. First the squeeze, then the smile, then the hand that ‘accidentally’ lands on the sunburned guy’s wrist. Stiles doesn’t move, because nobody on that bus would step in for him either.

Selective selfishness is a survival skill here, not a character flaw.

“Ey, College,” a voice says, and Stiles looks up to an easy grin attached to a mousy-looking guy — white, slicked back hair, nose kind of reminds him of the penguin from Gotham — holding a spiral notebook and a fistful of forms. He's slim, has tidy nails, and sets a kite — a request slip — on the corner of Stiles’s flyer like they share paper already. “Welcome to the neighborhood, first week’s rough, I can make it smoother.”

His first instinct is snark, a ‘not buying what you're selling’ to the face, but this isn't the kind of place he should follow that instinct, so Stiles sticks a polite smile onto his face instead. “Appreciate it.”

“Smart grabbing that,” the guy who still hasn't introduced himself — and Is that a prison thing? Should he be guarding his name too? He already uses a nickname most of the time, not giving people a way to refer to him just feels counterproductive — taps the header of the GED flyer, “paper in your hands makes you boring, boring’s good. You got a celly yet?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, noncommittal.

“Good, good,” the grin says ‘see, we’re already friends’ and Stiles doesn't trust it one bit, but to them he probably looks like the type that would. “I’m a connector, you need anything, like phone time, better soap, the right lines to stand in, you come through me. First help’s on the house, I invest in relationships.”

“Generous,” He offers, with no compromise.

“Also,” the guy leans in like a secret’s coming, all peppermint breath and laundry soap, “kites, grievances, case-manager notes, people mess those up all the time, weeks go nowhere, I’ve got the language that works. I’ll show you what to write, you’ll thank me later.”

“My lawyer said don’t sign anything I didn’t talk about first,” Stiles answers, which is true and useful, and also keeps from giving this guy any more rope. “I’m just getting my bearings.”

“Your lawyer doesn’t live here, kid. I live here,” the grin stays but the corners harden, “I’m being decent. Let me put you in the right line so you don’t end up owing the wrong faces.”

It's the ‘kid that does it, but Stiles keeps it friendly, because the game is that they're both pretending, “I hear you,” he nods, “but I'm not looking to start a tab.”

The kite edges farther over Stiles’s flyer, a quiet little space grab, and the guy’s knuckle taps the paper again, once, then twice. “Not a tab, just a handshake,” he assures, voice softer but pressure firmer, “everybody shakes somebody’s hand.”

Alright, Stiles decides, that's enough of that.

He doesn’t push fear, doesn’t touch minds, never that. He just lets the noise gather — fluorescent hiss, chair feet, radio crackle — and folds it closer to his skin until the space right here gets a shade too quiet and just a degree colder.

Then he gives gravity a little nudge.

The guy’s chair foot rides up, his elbow overcorrects, the spiral notebook skates off the edge, papers fan across the floor. He snatches for them, bangs his own pen into his sleeve, and the cheap ballpoint coughs a blot at the end of it.

“Floor’s a mess, man, they should level this.” He laughs too loud, it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Hate when that happens,” Stiles murmurs, eyes on the flyer like he didn’t notice anything, because he didn’t.

Nobody did. It's kind of the point.

Peppermint-breath kneels to gather his papers, a smile glued back on, checks his sleeve like maybe the stain will unstain if he inspects it hard enough, “So anyway,” he says, bright again, “Name's Weasley, but people call me Slick. Ask for me, I’m the guy who helps, I’ll get you the good language, it saves you months.”

“Noted,” Stiles doesn’t exactly write it down, since he has zero plans to do that.

The guy considers a handshake, thinks better of it with the ink on his cuff, slides his kite back off Stiles’s flyer like he meant to do that all along, and drifts to the call-out board, voice coming up cheerful at a different mark, same pitch, new promise.

That's definitely gonna get old real fast.

The yard's got a few sections to it — track, weight pit, bleachers, blind corners everyone pretends aren't there — and Stiles rides the first drift out, keeps to the fence line, and heads towards a bench with a wall at his back and a clean look at the exits, because he knows something's gonna happen, just not what yet.

Still, after turning up the ‘FUCK OFF’ aura during lunch so he could eat without being approached yet again by some local that thinks the new ‘kid’ is easy pickings and likely to fall into debt for whatever the scheme of the hour is, he knows it's only a matter of time before someone decides they've got a problem with him saying in his lane instead of theirs.

He keeps the same boring posture he wore through lunch, flyer folded in his pocket now, hands where people can see them, gaze loose enough to pass for idle and the hum under his skin held quiet like a live wire tucked out of sight.

Stiles clocks them before they pick him. The enforcer duo — Frazier leading, Duerson half a step behind — doesn’t break stride, they adjust their path so the three of them meet in a dead angle behind the pull-up bars where he assumes a camera and a CO can’t quite see. The one you only come to if you want things to go the way you want them to go.

“New kid,” Frazier echoes, the same as that morning, with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. “You keep finding our furniture. Kinda rude.”

“Didn’t see your monogram,” Stiles quips, friendly on purpose. “I’m just trying to be boring over here,”

Duerson laughs, but not with him. “Boring is for people who know how to take instruction,” he steps a half-foot closer. “Stand up.”

“Why,” Stiles asks in the same tone, not defiance so much as curiosity. “You want the bench?”

“We want you to learn,” Frazier replies, the word learn stretched like gum. “You eat alone, you sit where you feel like, you don’t pay respect. You think you’re special, or just stupid?”

“Mostly tired,” Stiles settles on, nodding toward nothing. “New faces, new rules, learning curve, y'know?” He goes to stand because sometimes standing defuses, sometimes it sparks, but you don’t find out while seated.

As he rises, Duerson slides a foot to block his toe, the old schoolyard trip, easy humiliation.

Stiles holds back a sigh, lets out a breath, and gives gravity the smallest suggestion. Nothing dramatic, just a tilt you could miss unless you’re standing on it.

Duerson’s heel rides a pebble that wasn’t under him a second ago and his knee pops straight into the bench leg with a mean little thunk. He swears, then grabs the bar to keep his balance and bangs his wrist. Frazier’s hand comes out to steady him, but the momentum is misjudged by an inch and he overcommits, shoulder clipping the post.

You could call it clumsy, you could call it stupid, but you couldn’t call it Stiles, who only watches passively. 

“Yo,” Duerson snaps, mostly at physics. “Watch-”

“Watch your feet,” Stiles completes, soft, almost helpful. “I’ve been tripping on everything since chow. Feels like they poured this slab crooked.”

Frazier rolls his shoulders back into place, breathes through his teeth, and recalibrates. He doesn’t like clumsy, he likes simple. He takes a half step to re-box Stiles in, then thinks better of it and stops where he is.

“You ain’t funny,” he says, low. “You don’t get to be funny.”

“I’m not,” Stiles agrees. “If you want the bench, say so. I’ll move.”

“We’re not asking,” Duerson says. He sets his foot more carefully, like his knee is still complaining, gaze flicking once toward the tower where a camera might catch a bad second. “We’re telling you to learn. Your. Place.” Each nearly audible period is emphasized with a thick finger poking his chest.

And Stiles, who's been tossed around by werewolves, tortured by a geriatric grandpa, survived eighteen years of Beacon Hills madness and lived to tell the tale, decides he's pretty much done dealing with this bullshit. Whichever hunters managed to frame him got him into jail, sure, but they can't make him sing to these people's tune.

He lets out a breath he’s been holding since lunch, gathering some of the cold around himself like a cloak. The hum under his skin tightens, then quiets, and the air between them feels a degree too still, the fear he feeds on turned into a nearly tangible thing.

“My place,” he echoes, “is wherever I want it to be.” He twists and pulls at the shadows, knowing exactly what angles to nudge them into for maximum dramatic effect, and pretends he's not enjoying it just a little bit when the Dumb and Dumber duo takes a half-step back. “I strongly suggest you leave me alone,” he adds. “Now.”

A whistle chirps from the weight pit. Not for them, but it cuts through. Duerson shifts first, testing his knee, then peels off like he meant to. Frazier holds one beat longer, a promise lingering in his eyes, but follows.

Stiles watches their backs for one breath. He sits again — same bench, same posture, hands visible — and lets his aura retreat for the moment. Whatever happened here was clumsy feet, bad paint, a bolt lip — yard nonsense.

Nothing anyone can pin on the quiet kid who keeps to himself.

Chapter Text

Stiles keeps his fear-fueled aura on the highest setting during the shower slot, performs the fastest rinse known to man, and gets into his clothes so fast that anyone looking might assume him being out of them was just a mirage. Thankfully, he didn't catch anyone looking, though that could be because all of the shower slots around him went mysteriously unclaimed during the three minutes he spent under the shower head.

Lucky, that.

Dinner is once again uneventful, though he can feel many more eyes on him than the day before, some more interested than others. Dumb and Dumber don't approach him again, which makes him thankful for small mercies, and he manages to avoid any trouble right up until they go through the final count of the day and get locked inside their cells.

Stiles lies on the top bunk, shoes still on, one hand draped over the rail. Below, Eddie periodically shifts on the bottom, being the kind of noisy he'd told Stiles not to be just the night before.

“Hey,” he says at last. “Stiles.”

“Hey,” he returns in the same cadence. 

“Been quiet.” Eddie makes note like he should care about it. “People get curious.”

“They can submit questions in writing,” Stiles suggests mildly. 

Eddie huffs. “They will, if there’s a reason.” He glances at the door, “you new-new, or just new to C tier?”

“New enough,” Stiles shifts in place, settling more comfortably for the game of twenty-questions he doesn't remember signing up for.

A short hum. “County first, or straight here?”

“Scenic route,” he says in fluent non-answer.

“That so,” Eddie pauses, then goes on as if Stiles is actually being helpful. “You running with anybody?”

“Whoever’s not talking,” He settles on.

Eddie’s mouth ticks up, “Fair enough, silence doesn’t bill you, right?”

Stiles nods, “Right.”

Eddie leans his elbows to his knees. “Look, tiers write stories when they don’t know. I can put something out there.”

Stiles tries not to roll his eyes too hard, then remembers the guy can't see it and does it anyway, “I'm not fussed about it, people can think what they want.”

Eddie weighs whether or not to push, then lets it go. “You got people tomorrow? Visits?”

“If the paperwork behaves,” Stiles replies, not about to deny it — they'll see him there — but not volunteering information either.

“Lawyer?” Eddie continues like he's being paid for the interview.

Actually, he might be.

“I’ve got reading material,” he keeps it noncommittal, a little more skittish after that thought.

“Good.” Another quiet stretch. Eddie tips his head back, studies the slats above him. “Where you from?”

Hellmouth, he thinks, but says “west” instead.

Eddie seems to realize he's not gonna get anything much out of him and settles back onto his bunk. Down the run, a gate buzzes and thumps, then the building goes back to breathing.

“Night, Stiles,” Eddie says after another minute of silence.

“Night,” Stiles answers, and settles in for another sleepless one.

Visitation smells like old coffee and sanitizer. Tables are bolted, with plexiglass dividers keeping things separate, and chairs light enough to slide but loud enough to be noticed if you scrape them wrong. A camera blinks red in the corner.

“Hands on the table, eyes up, no passing notes,” the CO does the rules speech like he’s done it a thousand times.

Jules is already sitting when they bring Stiles in, jeans and a soft sweater instead of office gear, dark hair down, no badge anywhere. She looks like Saturday, not like work, and still manages to sit like she’s taking a statement.

He takes the chair opposite, palms flat where everyone can see them. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she says, and it’s steady, but her nose twitches when the air off his clothes hits her. “You smell like this place.” It comes out almost a whisper. “You don’t smell like… us.”

“Yeah,” Stiles shrugs, he can't exactly help it. “Institutional chic. Powdered eggs and cinderblock.”

“I don't like it,” she insists, hands going from the table to her thighs when he notices them inching forward like she wants to reach out.

Stiles can’t help but feel a little bad about it, even if the ‘no touching’ rule is in no way his fault. Werewolves are tactile, and Jules’ pack doesn't work in the FBI like she does, so Stiles is usually the one taking the brunt of her need for physical contact. It's not like he minds, already so used to it from his own pack that he didn't notice it was happening until the first person asked about how long he and Jules had been together.

They aren't, but they're also not wasting their breaths trying to convince anyone otherwise, since it's none of their damn business anyway.

“It's temporary.” He reminds her, softer. “Nice sweater.”

Her mouth twitches. “Thanks. I was told casual.” She doesn’t say by who or for what. “We’re… working it,” she adds, switching lanes. Her voice goes professional without the words that would make it obvious. “We keep running into doors that shouldn’t be locked and names that don’t belong where they are.”

“Walls,” Stiles says, like he’s talking about a maze and not a case. “They’re fond of those.”

“Mm.” Jules glances past him and back. “We’re mapping, but the path keeps… rerouting.”

“Take the long way around,” he suggests, calm in a way he doesn’t entirely feel. “No wrecking balls. We don’t need the noise.”

Her knuckles press white against denim. “You good?” It’s too blunt for code, but she asks it low enough not to matter. “I mean- are you-”

“I’m fine,” he promises, and makes sure it sounds as believable as he can make it. “Promise.” He tips his head, breath even. “Friday was a learning curve. I learned.”

Her shoulders loosen a fraction. “You look like you haven’t slept.”

“I look amazing,” he deadpans. “Very high-end zombie.”

That gets him a quick grin she can’t hold.

“How’s-” he starts, then shifts the word. “Home?”

“We miss you.” She swallows the reflexive ‘you okay’ again. “The coffee tastes wrong without you messing with it.”

“Tragic,” he says, mouth twitching up slightly. “I expect a memorial plaque on the French press.”

“Already drafted.” She breathes out. “We’ll get there, Stiles. It’s just… it’s not straight lines.”

“Nothing worth it ever is.” He taps a fingertip once on the table, then reminds his body not to fidget. “Long way 'round is the right way ‘round.”

Jules nods, gaze dipping to his hands, rising to his face, then dipping again, like she’s counting how many new not-hims are layered over the old scent. “You sure you don’t want anything?” she asks, “I could-”

“I’m good.” He lets a smile show, small and real. “Seeing you is the thing.”

The CO strolls by, eyes doing the casual sweep that isn’t casual, and Jules sits a little straighter. “If something changes,” she continues, “I’ll let you know.”

“If it's mid-week, pass it through my lawyer,” Stiles warns, since visitation only happens on the weekends but a legal consult can be scheduled throughout the week.

Jules makes a face like she'd rather do anything else than exchange words with Stiles’ particular legal team and he can't help but chuckle, which finally seems to make her posture unwind.

They slip into more casual topics, Jules tells him about a TV show she's watching, Stiles mentions his doodles getting confiscated, and they fill the silence with as much comfort as they can fit into this small window of interaction.

“Time!” the CO calls way too soon, a clap of hands to move the room along.

Jules’s hand jerks before she stops it, a nearly-touch she kills mid-air. She settles for the visitor-room nod instead. “We’ve got you,” she promises, making eye contact like it’s a binding. “We’re not stopping.”

Stiles smiles, grateful. “I know.”

The yard is quieter that day, at least around him, like he's still got some credit before people stop watching and try to approach again. He sits on the same bench, watches the inmates who choose to exercise with some consideration — he might have to approach eventually, he can't imagine just sitting around rooms every single day and staying in shape for however long his stay ends up being is important — and goes back at the call without a fuss.

Stiles avoids the phones in the dayroom, not about to talk to anyone where it can be overheard by busibodies and maybe used against him, nevermind that he doesn't really have much to talk about — it's prison, which means he's bored most of the time, not exactly anything to write home about.

Dinner feels like holding his breath, and he's pretty sure he catches Shaw — the one who holds court around a chess set — watching him a few times, but he still manages to go through it without any further incidents.

Instead of lingering, he drops in on the chapel. Not for a religious reason — if he's anything, it can probably be called agnostic — but for the legitimate reason to be off the tier without owing anyone. Besides, there's staff watching, cameras rolling, and fewer hustlers than the yard or the dayroom.

He grabs a chair in the back row, ends up with a meditation booklet in his hand, and occupies his time by keeping track of who shows up, who sits where, and who seems more respected by the staff.

Showers come later and he repeats the same patterns of the day before, refusing to linger too long in such a vulnerable position. Someone tries to corner him at the exit, an inmate he hadn't taken notice of before, but he ends up slipping and misses him entirely.

Bathroom floors are slippery, these things happen.

Eddie gets talkative at night, again. “That your girlfriend?” he asks, clearly referring to Jules.

“Nonya,” Stiles quips, not feeling like discussing his friend with the celly.

“Weird name,” Eddie notes, and Stiles snorts.

“Short for ‘none ya business’,” he explains, and holds back a grin at the clearly frustrated huff it earns him.

“Smart mouths don't last long ‘round here,” Eddie warns, with very little actual worry infused into it.

Stiles scoffs. “Good thing I'm not staying for long,” he says, and that's the end of that.

Sunday is the same flavor of boring, except for the lack of a visitor, since he can only have one per weekend. He still feels watched, but no one chooses to approach, which is more restraint than he'd have dared assume these people to be capable of. Eddie flits between tables, occasionally catching his eye, and Stiles wonders if the guy has decided whether he's going to be a problem or not.

Stiles really hopes not. He'll have to sleep eventually.

Monday seeps in slowly while Stiles boredly doodles on the empty spots of the meditation booklet with the handout pencil he'd smuggled from the chapel and ponders whether subjecting himself to a group therapy session is worth the hassle for the chance to try and talk them into giving him something like a journal. He settles on not yet.

The classroom he chooses to drop in on during the morning's program window smells like dry-erase and floor wax, and feels just as welcoming as Mr. Harris’ classroom. There's ten plastic chairs, laminate tables, a clock that ticks just loud enough to be mildly annoying, and a CO posted at the door with a clipboard and an expression set to neutral-plus-watchful.

Stiles signs the sheet as ‘Stiles S.’ and takes the back-row end seat near the door. Wall to one shoulder, aisle to the other, camera dome in the front corner where it can see everybody yawn. He has a packet in front of him like proof he belongs.

The instructor’s civilian — mid-30s, cardigan, sensible shoes, and a teacher voice that can cut through a cafeteria. “Orientation only,” she says, friendly but brisk. “No commitments today. If you want GED after this, you’ll fill the blue slip, not the white one. Testing calendar’s on page three.”

Stiles really doesn't need to be there — his double major from George Mason University says so — but ‘attended orientation’ looks good on his file, it reads as cooperative. Besides, it's just as safe a bet as the chapel, with the added bonus that he might manage to get his hands on a library request slip, so he puts his head down and skims through the packet like a good little inmate.

Roll call goes around, with last name and what you want out of it. When it hits him, he says, “Stilinski, just observing,” and the teacher nods like that’s allowed. Paper shuffles, dates get circled, a blue slip and a flimsy handout make the rounds. Stiles pockets a library request — the only prize he came for — and pretends page three matters.

He clocks the exits, the camera dome, who showed up together and who tried not to. Ten minutes later it’s “questions?” and then “you can drop the blue slip by count.” Chairs scrape, but nobody rushes.

Stiles stacks his packet, lets two bodies pass, and files out under the CO’s watchful gaze.

Chapter Text

Stiles crawls down for count on Tuesday like he's only being held up by spite and the fact that not getting up would bring more trouble than it's worth. His eyes follow the CO he's getting used to seeing on dawn turnover, a red-haired, bearded, somewhat middle-aged looking guy — the beard does him no favors — that hovers a couple of inches taller than most and always carries a ring of iron keys. The name patch on his chest says ‘Greene’ and he looks like the kind of officer that should bring a backup to any confrontation because a stiff wind might knock him over.

“Stilinski,” Greene says after the last number clears. Not loud, but enough to be overheard. “Hold back.”

A couple of guys glance over like they can smell trouble. Stiles steps out of the slipstream and waits by the rail. He keeps his face on that neutral setting he’s been practicing since intake while Greene finishes a word with another CO at the stair, checks a camera cone with the kind of casual glance that isn’t, and comes to a stop half a step off Stiles’ shoulder.

“Walk,” he says, already moving. Not to the stairs, but a short loop past the sally port where one lens hands off to the next and there’s a two-pace lull.

Well, that’s comforting. Not. Stiles still matches his steps, because what else can he possibly do in his position. “Did I do-?”

“No.” Greene’s mouth doesn’t quite become a smile, but looks like it wants to. “You didn’t do something, that's part of the issue.” He tips his chin. “How long since you slept?”

Stiles swallows back a too-fast answer. “I sleep.”

“Not last night.” Not an accusation, an observation. “Not the night before, either.” He glances sideways, and for a heartbeat his pupils look too big for the light. “You’ve been running on wires.”

Stiles keeps his hands loose. “You making me an offer to fix that, or asking if I want disciplinary for sarcasm before breakfast?” he can't help but quip, wondering how in the world this officer can tell he's been awake.

He thought he'd made a good enough ruse of being asleep during the night so far, and no flashlights ever stopped at his cell to check, from what he remembers.

“If you want medical to write for something, I’ll route it,” Greene offers instead of jumping on the chance to get him in trouble for his cheek like the prison version of Snape. “It’s been too long to be healthy.”

It reads like concern, which is somehow more unnerving than a threat. “You don’t know me,” Stiles says carefully.

“I know the shape of a bad night,” is the response he gets, as unhelpful and cryptic as a certain druid back home.

Stiles frowns in confusion, still not sure where the officer is going with this. “What does that even mean?”

Greene’s gaze traces the red ‘EXIT’ sign, bounces off the next camera, then comes back more decisive. “I can tell when people sleep wrong. Panic has a pressure, guilt has a temperature, some of them carry it like a second spine.” His voice stays level. “You’re awake, but the room around you is quieter than it should be.”

It’s a weird way to say I see you, and somehow Stiles believes it. He hears himself ask, “How do you… sense that?” and then, because subtlety is dead anyway, “What are you?”

Greene’s thumb rests on the flat of an iron key he's been holding since the count, just enough to leave a dent. “It has a dozen names. Where my mother’s people came from, they called it a mare.” He watches Stiles expectantly, like he's waiting for a reaction that doesn't come. “Not a horse. Not the word for nightmare. The thing inside it. We ride the edge of sleep.”

Stiles blinks, his brain grabbing for folklore cards and coming up with vague outlines — old women on chests, breath pinned, hair knotted by morning — that bring up more questions than answers. “Like a night hag? I’ve read- well, I read something once, but it was half a paragraph and a lot of conjecture, and if it’s a condition not a- right, okay, do you actually- like can you really phase through keyholes? Is it literal or more like a-”

“Stop.” It's not sharp, just a palm held low in a don’t-spook-the-horses gesture, which is a much better response than his waterfall of questions usually gets from strangers. “Later, maybe. What are you?”

Stiles lets out a slow breath. The safe answer is nothing, and the true answer is complicated, so he picks a middle ground he can live with. “A bit of a mix-up,” he settles on. “Not one thing. Nothing you’ve got a handbook for.”

Greene waits.

“I can stay functional without sleep for a while,” Stiles adds, still more inclined to fill the silence than he'd like to be. “I’ve got… ways. But actual sleep? That’s not happening with someone I don’t trust in the room, especially a dangerous someone.”

Greene nods once like a box just got checked. “Alright.”

“That’s it?” Stiles stares. “Alright?”

“You’re not the first person to keep a lid on something to avoid making it worse.” Greene’s gaze tracks a trustee pushing a broom, then returns. “I’ll look into it.”

“Into what.” He more deadpans than questions.

“Whether you can get some quiet,” the officer clarifies, though he doesn’t say how. “Or, failing that, whether medical can sand the edges down until you can do it yourself.”

Stiles hears the door buzz for chow, the tier shifting toward it in practiced lines. He stays where he is because Greene hasn’t said he can move yet, and because this is somehow not a trap and feels like one anyway. “Why would you bother?” he asks finally. “Random inmate’s sleep schedule’s not your problem.”

Greene rolls the key in his palm. “Because I like a quiet tier.” A beat. “And because you don’t feel like the others.”

There’s a lot inside that sentence, and Stiles can't help but poke at it. “Feel how?”

“Most nights here taste the same,” Greene shrugs like the words aren't the smallest kind of confession. “Regret, when it shows up, is old. A lot of what’s left is the kind that keeps bleeding forward.” He looks at Stiles like he’s trying to see into him. “You don’t carry that, you carry something else.”

“Which is… good?” Stiles asks, not sure of it himself.

“Which is different,” Greene replies, and somehow that’s kinder than either answer would have been. He tilts his head toward the movement at the far end of the tier. “Go eat. Keep your hands visible, don’t prove me wrong between here and the line.”

Stiles huffs a laugh that doesn’t quite make it to his mouth. “I’ll do my best.”

Greene steps back into the cone of the camera, all clean lines and policy posture. “If you want medical, ask at the window,” he says, default voice back on. “You’ll get routed. If you don’t want medical, you’ll still get routed somewhere.”

“I’ll think about it,” Stiles remains noncommittal, because a tab with a CO is still a tab, surprisingly sympathetic supernatural creature or not.

The line pulls him in once he reaches it and he lets it, sliding into the tractored movement of the unit.

He sure hadn't seen that coming.

Someone sits next to him during breakfast, a middle-aged blond with an ear-length cut and a short beard. He doesn't sit too close, so Stiles decides not to make a big deal out of it and ignores the guy, happy to be ignored right back. When breakfast ends, silent-blond disappears into the crowd, and Stiles chooses not to question it.

At the dayroom — because Stiles has yet to get a job assignment — the blond comes back.

“You want a laundry shift?” He asks, as if they'd left things off in the middle of a conversation and were just picking it up again.

“I'm good,” Stiles replies, still not looking to start a tab.

“No tax,” the blond adds — like he’s been told to say exactly that and nothing else — and doesn’t push.

He shakes his head, “still good.”

Silent-blond nods, keeps to himself for a little longer, then goes away like his duty's done. Stiles manages to track him this time, watching as he pauses next to the call-out board, gives a shake of the head to no one in particular, then veers off toward the laundry gate.

Interesting, he decides, because his brain has nothing better to focus on than prison dynamics at the moment, and files the faces of the four other people who were close to the board for later consideration.

Lunch is steam and noise, stainless clatter, and a line that moves fast if you don’t pay attention. A trustee with a hairnet tucked in his pocket clocks Stiles in the shuffle and drifts parallel, not blocking, not friendly, just there.

“We’re hiring,” he says, voice low so it doesn’t carry. “Kitchen’s steady, honest work.”

“Honest debt, too,” Stiles answers, tray hot in his hands.

The trustee’s mouth tips, not offended. “You’re not wrong.” A small nod toward the back gate. “If you change your mind...”

“Appreciate it,” he says, wondering if there's a betting pool somewhere on who's gonna get him into some sort of debt first.

Sounds stupid, but he doubts these people have much better to do. He sure doesn't, and would very much like into said betting pool, if only for entertainment value.

By the time they're let out into the yard, his body wants movement but his survival instincts tell him not pull-ups — at least not yet, he may have magic on his side but some of the dudes over there are twice his size — so he picks the track. Outer lane, fence to his right, hands out of pockets like the sign doesn’t say it but the COs sure do, loud and clear. He falls into a fast walk, not a jog, just enough to make his brain quiet for a lap or two.

The track has its rules — keep right, don’t clump, don’t stop in the lane — and people mostly pretend to follow them. Pairs peel off to talk near the bleachers, a few speed-walkers eat distance on the inside, and Stiles tries to pretend he's walking through the preserve instead of being stuck in a box of concrete.

Half a lap in, a guy merges from the pull-up bars without looking, with gray sweats, buzzed hair, and the kind of ‘oops’ posture that comes with practice. He slows just a hair as Stiles comes up, heel floating right in front of him.

Stiles feels it a fraction early — too late to avoid, early enough to survive. His toe kisses the guy’s heel, his own foot skates, and his center of gravity lurches toward the concrete like it wants to meet it. He takes a long step that turns into a half-jog, a hand hovering but never touching the fence, his breath catching and settling. No faceplant. No scene.

“Watch your lane,” the gray-sweats guy says, like the joke’s for him.

“All good,” Stiles answers, because the point is to make it nothing. 

He keeps his pace, doesn't look back, and instead looks around for any COs who may have caught the exchange.

Wilkins’ eyes flick to his feet, then to gray-sweats, then past both of them. He writes nothing, says nothing, and three steps later he tells a stranger, “Keep the inside lane clear,” and keeps walking.

Okay, Stiles thinks back to Greene and suddenly wishes the guy didn't only have the dawn shift. Wilkins sees what he wants. Got it.

On the next pass he clocks gray-sweats properly — scar at the jaw hinge, heel drag on the left — and puts the details where he keeps all the other could-be-relevant ones. Another lap, he decides, then he’ll be bored on a bench again like it’s a job he’s good at.

Chapter Text

Eddie tries to interrogate him again at night, the same way he's tried to since Stiles’ second day, and it's audible how frustrated he's becoming with Stiles’ non-answers. He might have felt bad for the guy, if he didn't have a suspicion that whatever information his celly gathers ends up traded like its own form of currency.

Answers or not, the result is another sleepless night.

Greene levels him a with a knowing look in the morning, to which Stiles can only shrug and pretend exhaustion isn't slowly draping itself over him like a weighted blanket, only held at bay by the ample amount of energy to keep recharging his supernatural batteries — it's a prison, no one here is exactly sunshine and rainbows, and there's plenty of strife to metaphorically munch on — and Stiles’ own near endless supply of sheer stubbornness.

All in all, things are almost peaceful, which is how he knows it won't last very long.

On their way to breakfast, Eddie ‘accidentally’ trips him into someone's tray, and Stiles hurriedly pulls on the inmate's confrontational aura until it's more geared towards calm again, then offers his own breakfast to make up for the damage. He can live without one meal, but if the reputation he's trying to build — a neutral one of someone who stays in their lane as long as they're not messed with — gets tarnished with the label of ‘troublemaker’, he can probably kiss goodbye any of the minor comforts he's been afforded so far.

When his eyes search for Eddie again, the guy's nowhere to be seen.

Dayroom goes by with the feeling of eyes on him, though none meet his when he raises them from one of the flyers he'd selected at the board to use as a prop this time. The constant anticipation of something makes his hairs stand on end, and Stiles ends up fidgeting more than he would have liked, fingers tapping the flyer, knees restlessly bouncing, the picture of ‘way too much energy’ with nothing to channel it to.

By the time they make it to the yard, he's already decided to walk the track again, too jittery to stand still for another minute.

He doesn't notice the tension building. Well, more accurately, he doesn't realize that the tension isn't entirely directed at him until it finally implodes.

Bear’s boys — he doesn't know the guy's name, but ‘Bear’ definitively accurately represents the man's size — have claimed their strip of shade by the pull-ups, Frazier’s crew cuts too close on a pass, and somebody’s shoulder does that ‘oops’ thing people practice in mirrors. A fleck of spit lands a little too near someone’s shoe, a hanger-on says, “Say it with your chest,” like he’s ordering a fight off the menu, and it all converges like the perfect recipe for disaster.

Stiles clocks Shaw on the benches, hands laced, eyes following the brewing storm like it's a science experiment. He clocks Harlan — one of the usual yard COs — at the rail with a clipboard and whistle, watching the flow the way lifeguards watch a pool. He clocks another CO he hasn't memorized the name of at the gate, posture set to perpetually bored. And Wilkins — because of course Wilkins is here — is angled toward a different patch of yard entirely, talking at a trustee like the conversation is more interesting than the issue in front of him.

A jogger clips Stiles’ heel like an invite to react. Stiles lengthens his step, catches his balance, and keeps moving. He drifts toward the fence line, two steps, not enough to look like he's approaching, just enough that he can see everybody.

The moment swells like a bruise. Two chests rise, shoulders square, one guy’s chin ticks up exactly once in the prelude to butting heads.

Stiles considers letting it be, realizes it might become more trouble than not interfering is worth, and folds the noise to his skin instead. He breathes like he’s supposed to — quick in, long out — and the air cools half a shade as he exhales. The pressure in the space drops, because he's pulling it into himself, picking at the budding chaos like it's a snack and leaving only the previous calm behind.

“Keep the lane clear,” he says to the yard in general. Not to a face, not a challenge, just a policy voice borrowed from the many CO callouts so far.

Bodies obey tones they hear all day. The square-up turns into a shrug into a step back, a guy who might’ve pushed doesn’t, and another one who might’ve laughed late decides not to do that either.

Stiles keeps moving along, reinforcing a notice-me-not feeling around himself and pretending he doesn't notice the eyes following him from the benches.

They snake into the showers two by two, still in state blues with a towel rolled tight under one arm and a soap packet pinched in the same hand, steam already ghosting down the corridor and turning the air warm. The line glues itself to the cinderblock wall, shoulders touching, everyone pretending this is normal. There’s a CO at the door doing a headcount and tempo, and the cameras up in the corners trade coverage like a relay race, but attention wavers and CCTV always has its seams.

Eddie finds one.

He slides in on Stiles’ blind side and plants himself so close his shoulder taps ribs. A heel comes down on the edge of Stiles’ shower sandal, pinning it casually, like he's stepping on a leaf. Stiles tries to shift, but the wall is at his left shoulder and Eddie at his right, so he holds his breath for half a beat before exhaling calmly.

“Back of the line’s that way,” Stiles says without looking, voice flat enough to pass for boredom.

Eddie’s laugh is a breath in his ear, all teeth and no humor. He posts one palm on the block beside Stiles’ head to box him in, and with the other hand pinches the edge of Stiles’ towel roll, like he might peel it open right here. “You're making life difficult for me,” he confides, like it's entirely Stiles’ fault what he chooses or not to do with his life. “So I make life difficult for you.”

“Hands off my property,” Stiles replies, even and audible. He keeps his eyes forward, posture non-threatening, because if the CO looks their way he won't read intent, just positioning.

“Property,” Eddie echoes, amused, giving the towel the tiniest unroll so the cotton slips a half-inch. “You keep saying no to friends, man. That’s debt. Debt collects.”

Stiles plants his palm on the cinderblock at chest height. Not a shove. Not even a touch. Just an anchor that says I’m standing here and you’re not going through me. “You’re crowding the aisle,” he says. “Move your foot.”

Eddie leans that last half inch, enough that the heat becomes personal, and Stiles makes a conscious effort not to flinch away. He's not about to give this idiot the satisfaction of affecting him with his posturing.

“Or what?” Eddie asks softly, “you’ll complain at the window? Make me a problem on paper?” The smile reaches his voice. “I like paper, it gets lost.”

“Move,” Stiles repeats. He lets the word sit, pondering how subtle a slight gravity tilt that lands his celly on his ass might be. Unfortunately, there's too many bodies and one camera cone is about to swing back, but he still shucks a layer of noise off the space they share, the warm steam in their vicinity slowly losing its heat.

The line shuffles, a towel slaps tile somewhere up front, and the CO barks “Keep it moving!” without looking because that’s what you do when you feel like you might have missed something.

Eddie’s heel eases off Stiles’ sandal like it never happened.

“See you at mail,” Eddie murmurs, letting the towel edge slip free with a tiny flick that is ninety percent dominance display, and a hundred percent more dramatic than Stiles signed up for. As he slides past, his hand drags Stiles’ shoulder, friendly like a pat from a man who doesn’t have friends.

Two of Eddie’s satellites snicker late, the kind of late that means they were watching for the punchline, not the punch. Stiles squares up his shoulders, re-rolls the towel tighter with one deliberate turn, and takes two small steps with the line to reclaim his oxygen.

When it’s his turn, he keeps the towel high and picks a stall dead-center in a camera cone on purpose. There’s a hurry to his motions that isn’t panic so much as math.

Fewer angles, fewer shadowed corners, fewer chances for trouble.

Mail call turns the dayroom into a slow conveyor. There's a cart with envelopes and forms, a desk window with a slot, a corrections officer reading names off wristbands and address panes. The line snakes, wrists up, eyes front. Outgoing slips go into a separate tray, and incoming doesn’t linger.

“Stilinski,” the window CO says, voice flat from repetition. He pinches an envelope halfway through the slot.

Pressure closes in behind Stiles like a door. Eddie slides into the squeeze, breath warm at the hinge of Stiles’ jaw, fingers already on the corner of the envelope like it was meant for him the whole time.

“That’s mine,” Eddie declares, easy as air.

Stiles plants his palm on the ledge. “Name on that is Stilinski, not Warfield,” he says, loud enough for the desk, not loud enough for an audience.

A beat of nothing, then the CO looks down, checks the windowed address, and pulls the envelope back from both of them. He hands it to Stiles without commentary, and his other hand — without looking up — makes a small neat tick on the clipboard beside him.

“Keep the line moving,” the CO says to the room.

Eddie’s smile doesn’t crack. He leans in the breath the rules allow while eyes are on them. “Debt comes due,” he murmurs, like a reminder and a promise.

Stiles doesn’t look at him, just slides the envelope under his folded commissary list, tucks it flat against his ribs, and walks away.

When they kick them back from dinner, the cell is wrong.

Eddie’s soap scrap is gone from the sink lip, the little prayer-card curl taped to his shelf is a torn dot of adhesive, and the mattress has new creases where someone stripped it fast and tight and left nothing.

His eyes scan the room as he palms under his own mattress seam — clear —, runs two fingers along the shelf’s back edge — nothing folded into it — and does a quick check of the vent bolts — same scratches, no change. He nudges his property roll a half inch and back, and it's still the same weight as it was this morning.

No note, no warning, just absence where a problem used to be.

There's a bark of “Count!” down the run, so he sets his shoulders to neutral and goes to stand where he's visible, the emptiness at his right shoulder humming like new air.

He doesn’t smile, but he definitely feels like it.

When the rail walk reaches his door, he lifts his chin in the polite ‘legit question’ signal meant for one CO in particular, and stands still in a cell he might finally be able to sleep in.

Once count clears, Greene stops at Stiles’ door.

“Warfield’s reassigned,” Greene answers the unspoken question, voice low enough to die at the threshold.

“Temporary?” Stiles keeps his eyes up front instead of looking around for answers.

“Until intake fills gaps or classification finds you a compatible cellmate.” The officer shrugs one shoulder, “could be days.”

Stiles very nearly sighs in relief. “Copy.”

He doesn’t say thanks, because he refuses to open a tab with something he didn't specifically ask for, no matter how beneficial.

“I looked you up,” Greene adds unexpectedly, making Stiles's breath catch.

“Hm?” He feigns disinterest, and wonders if this is where blackmail comes in.

“You do good work out there, Red.” The officer tells him, and his shoulders loosen by a notch at the nickname that tells him Greene's research wasn't just into his federal career. “Make sure you get back to it.”

Stiles lets a small smile touch his lips, “Yeah… working on it.”

Chapter Text

As tired as Stiles may be, he doesn't immediately fall asleep, no matter how tempting a few hours of shut-eye sounds after nearly a week of keeping his guard up at any given moment.

Instead, he lays down on the top bunk and waits until the noise of the tier slows into its nightly rhythm. The first sign of a flashlight glances past the cell door, the sound of boots grows fainter, and the coughing from what sounds like two cells away finally subsides. Finally, he counts his breaths — in for four, out for six — and pulls on the older layer of power intertwined with his spark.

Nothing changes, the cameras see him sleeping — slow chest rise under a neat blanket crease — and that is exactly the point. Stiles rises from the bed, already digging for his stolen pencil, and the illusion holds strong. To anyone other than himself — and maybe Greene, if the officer chooses to pay any particular attention — Stiles is fast asleep, no doubt about it.

The first thing he does is let a dark-violet wash slide over his vision, the cell sharpening like someone turned up the dimmer, turning the darkness into something he can see comfortably in. Then, he perches himself on the top corner of the bed, and reaches for the ceiling space just around the vent with the pencil in hand.

The rune comes with practiced ease: a vertical Isa as the spine for what he wants to still, a small Ingwaz over it to contain the sound, a tiny inverted Ansuz to hush the ‘mouth’ of the vent, and a short, horizontal Laguz stroke on each side of the diamond to diffuse and absorb whatever's left. He repeats it on all four sides of the vent, each bind-rune small enough it could fit on his thumbnail, and finishes it by laying his palm flat on the vent and channeling some of his spark into the drawings, focusing on his intent.

When his hand lowers, the vent hum is gone. Whatever starts in this room, stays in this room.

Not about to stop there, he climbs off the top bunk and to the cell door, pencil now set to paint-covered metal bars as he scribbles a bind-rune into them. Nauthiz, Algiz, Thurisaz and Tiwaz all touch at the spine in a constraint ward, which — coupled with a two-finger press and a measure of belief — makes sure anyone with ill intent will think twice before approaching, and maybe even change their mind halfway through.

It's not a forcefield, just turns approach into hesitation, then second thoughts.

Since he's already on a roll, Stiles moves over to the bunk head and sketches a quick bind-rune for peaceful sleep into the frame, grouping Ingwaz, Laguz, Isa and Berkano in a way that will help his buzzing mind settle into something calm enough to slip into slumber. It won't knock him out — that's a different rune altogether — but makes it much easier to fall asleep when he means to.

Finally, each set of bind-runes gets a thumb-smudge and sleeve buff, so the graphite reads like old grime unless you’re looking for it. When the last mark half-fades, he lets the room stop humming, slides under the blanket, wipes the violet from his sight, and sleep drops over him like a lid.

A yellow call-out slip gets him pulled from tier after morning count, and not even the prospect of who he's about to meet trumps his bone-deep satisfaction at finally getting a good night's sleep.

There's a pat-down at the sally port, a wristband scan, then cuffs in front on a short waist chain with two COs on either elbow. They walk him past admin glass down to the legal corridor, which is half phone-booth stalls and one small interview room with a bolted table. A CO logs the time, unlocks the door, and parks outside within sight.

Inside it’s fluorescent buzz, plastic chairs, a copy of the no-recording notice taped crooked, and the perpetually smarmy face of one Peter Hale, clad in a too-fancy-for-jail suit he'd bet a month's salary is Armani or something equally as expensive.

Stiles gets his cuffs taken off under the werewolf's amused gaze, sits down, and waits until the door shuts behind the corrections officer to glare at the man on the other side of the desk.

“Please tell me you passed the bar and not a note,” Stiles says.

Peter smiles, sharp as usual. “Multiple bars, none served decent coffee,” Stiles shakes his head in amusement. “I’m second chair, try not to faint with relief.”

Stiles rolls his eyes, “I'll do my best,” he drawls. “Did you bring any case updates, or just your winning personality?”

“Pack first,” He replies, which infuriatingly makes Stiles have to appreciate him. “Home front is… stable enough. Your dad’s fine, I made sure the long-distance rumor mill doesn’t put your name on any bulletin boards. Scott’s delegation has been disabused of the idea of any solo heroics or midnight rescues, and Melissa told me to tell you to eat and not die.”

“Planning on it,” Stiles assures, because she'll want the verbal confirmation.

“Two out-of-towners sniffed around Beacon Hills and then DC,” Stiles’ breath catches at that, hating the thought of his home turning into a battleground again. “Some courier chatter said you were ‘worth leaning on’, so I leaned back harder. They’re gone.” He flicks his eyes toward the glass. “No footprints that lead to you.”

“Define ‘leaned back’,” Stiles raises one brow.

“Firmly and legally,” Peter says, which is the kind of answer that could go either way. “Also, I had a very civil chat with a certain regional ‘mentor’ who thought he could trade in your name. He can’t.”

Stiles squints. “You didn’t introduce him to a stairwell, did you?” That had been the theme of the last throwaway threat, if he remembers it right.

He's not Deaton's biggest fan, but isn't about to sanction the guy's murder in the name of petty revenge.

“Stiles.” Peter looks offended. “I introduced him to the concept of liability. With witnesses.” He pauses, noticeably for the dramatic effect. “And stairs nearby.”

Stiles snorts despite himself. “Okay. Case?”

“Lead counsel is handling filings, I'm just color commentary.” He taps the desk, perfectly manicured nails noisy against the metal. “Discovery supplement's delayed, and the prosecution’s still pretending their timeline doesn't have an adorable gap you could drive a bus through. We're trying for a bail review, but don't hold your breath.”

“Wasn't planning on it,” Stiles admits with a sigh. “Figured I was in for the long haul, given… everything.”

They went through a lot of effort to get him out of the way, so Stiles doubts he'll be taking a single step out of jail anytime soon, even if it's due to hearing dates being mysteriously delayed or evidence somehow getting misplaced in the background. Hunters don't do things by halves — unless they're cutting up a werewolf, then you get two halves, which… does technically make a whole and sort of validates the initial premise, doesn't it?

A knuckle rap on the window pulls Stiles away from those spiraling thoughts. Time check. The CO outside doesn’t look in, just marks the log.

Peter gives him an assessing look with an edge of worry that reminds Stiles they're still pack, despite the snark. “There’s also a note from Derek,” he says, apparently satisfied with what he finds. “It’s short. I’ll bring it next time if you promise not to cry.”

“I’ll save my tears for your closing argument,” Stiles assures.

“Please don’t, jurors hate salt.” He rises and brushes nonexistent lint off his clothes. “Eat, sleep, and let us litigate. I’ll handle the uninvited.”

Stiles tilts his head. “You mean the hunters, or the packs?”

Ironically, it's sometimes easier to handle hunters — at least the solo kind that hasn't joined the whole campaign against the supernatural going on in the shadows — than the three packs they attempt to keep track of and coordinate with. That's what happens when people decide to move all over the country for college and work.

“Yes,” Peter says, and gives him the kind of look that passes for reassurance in his world. “I’ll be back.”

The door unlocks, the chain comes on, and Stiles keeps his face bored and his pulse steady as he returns to his apparently not-as-temporary-as-they-had-hoped living space.

Friday yard is hot and bright, with emphasis on hot. Stiles takes the outer lane of the track again, fence to his right, hands visible, pace steady. On his third lap, he sees Shaw lift two fingers from the benches like he's flagging down a waiter.

Stiles considers pretending he didn't see it, but his nights have been restful enough the past couple of days that his mood is up — or as up as can be when stuck in a max-security box of concrete with the kind of people he usually works to put away — and that means he doesn't immediately assume the potential conversation will end badly.

He stops his walk, heads over to the benches, and sits with a safe gap in between them just in case. He's observed so far how the guy is more about words than actions, but this really isn't the place to stop being cautious.

“Stiles, right?” He asks like the nickname wasn't provided by Eddie, the only person he'd told to call him Stiles since arriving.

“Shaw,” Stiles greets with a nod, making it clear he's not the only one watching.

“I hear your cell lost weight,” Shaw says, eyes on the track. “What'd you trade it for?”

“Nothing,” He shrugs. “Housing did a compatibility review and fixed a problem,” he hazards a guess, not about to say a fellow supernatural creature took pity on him for his lack of sleep.

“Warfield isn’t short on friends,” the warning kind of feels like it should be phrased the other way around, but he doesn't mention it.

“They can write him letters,” Stiles quips, “and keep me out of it.”

Shaw’s laugh is small and unkind. “You didn’t stay out of it Wednesday.”

“I told people to keep the lane clear,” Stiles shrugs. “Policy voice works on people who hear it all day. I didn’t touch anybody.”

“You changed something,” It's not accusing, just measuring.

“Or they chose not to be idiots in front of a whistle,” is his rebuttal.

Shaw shifts on the bench. “I can keep things simple for you,” he makes the offer like it's a magnanimous one. “No one clips your heel, no one plays grab-hand at mail. People listen when I tell them to.”

“I don’t start tabs,” Stiles says like the mantra it's starting to become. “If I owe you, you decide when the bill comes due. Hard pass.”

“Everyone starts tabs,” The man insists. “Some of us are better at pretending we didn’t.”

“Then we’ll both pretend,” Stiles keeps his voice easy. “I’ll stay in my lane unless shoved.”

“Single cell won’t last,” Shaw reminds him. “Intake day comes. You’ll want a say in who shares your air.”

“I’ll take my chances with classification,” He decides, more inclined to trust Greene with his celly selection than the one trying to make the possibility into an issue.

Wilkins wanders past, gives the benches a glance that doesn’t linger, and keeps going. Shaw watches him go, then looks back at Stiles like he’s decided on his next move.

“When someone comes to collect,” Shaw says, “come talk to me first. I don’t need you, but I don’t like waste.”

The warning gives him an amusing sense that, much like everyone else, Shaw doesn't know quite what to do about him but doesn't want to risk not having the upper hand.

Talk about a control freak.

“If someone comes to collect, they’ll need better math,” Stiles warns, standing. “Enjoy the sun.”

He steps back into the track flow, settles into his rhythm, and lets the bench become just another piece of yard furniture.

Chapter Text

After the talk with Shaw, things fall into a lull. Stiles is entirely aware that the lack of approaches brings with it a false sense of security — for however secure one can feel surrounded by criminals — but inevitably relaxes into it anyway, his body falling into a mind-numbing routine that honestly counts as more of a punishment than the lack of privacy and the unwanted company.

He does manage to weasel semi-regular access to reading material through the chapel, which does more for his faith than any Jehovah's witness ever did. Most of it are classics, likely from a selection curated to be unlikely to incite any mutinous ideas into the mind of whichever inmate gets their hands on them, but some he hasn't read yet and are a welcome break from the lack of anything intellectually stimulating present in every other moment of his new routine.

If his English teacher could see him now… he probably wouldn't be very surprised, truth be told. He's pretty sure most of his high-school teachers thought of him and his friends as delinquents by the time they graduated.

It takes a few days for him to realize that when people decide to stay away, they do it like it's a new rule of the land. Stiles wonders what kind of pull Shaw has in this place that manages to keep every single inmate from approaching him since their talk, then decides he doesn't want to know, because curiosity would inevitably turn into digging, which would turn into finding things people don't want him to, and while he wouldn't mind it any other time, he's supposed to be keeping his head down and surviving, not uncovering some hypothetical prison-wide conspiracy.

Still, people literally peel away from any table he drifts towards, the phones go mysteriously ‘busy’ when he's within earshot — he doesn't even want to use the phones, but it's the principle of the thing — and even the shower line gets more spacious that it has any right to be, not that he's complaining.

He hates that it gets to him, just a little. It's the pack's fault, really, when he looks at it. He's come to expect and even crave a certain amount of human interaction, and even if he really doesn't want any physical contact with other inmates — that contact is for people that feel safe, not those who would shank him for a pack of cigs — it's still unnerving to be entirely isolated wherever he goes.

So, like the contrary person he is, Stiles takes full advantage of it.

Watching people's reactions when he approaches and they have to stop what they're doing to avoid him turns into a fun new pastime, and he finally gets to use the gym-like side of the yard without fear of someone trying to break him in half for intruding. If everyone wants to follow orders and pretend he doesn't exist like they're in kindergarten, they might as well pay for it with their inconvenience.

He does sort of wish he had someone to play chess at the yard tables with, though. Playing yourself gets old really quick, and brings up memories he'd rather keep buried.

With nothing better to do and ample opportunity to watch the environment, Stiles starts a mental roster: Mendez is the name of the kitchen trustee who does occasional protein swaps, Malcolm runs the laundry carts on odd weekdays, Packer is the one who tripped him at the tracks and runs a covert gambling ring, Slick seem to still be on top of the whole jailhouse-lawyer thing, the blond who ignored him then offered a laundry shift is Trevor Cain and mostly keeps to the chapel when he's not on cleaning duty, and on it goes.

He watches, takes mental notes, and attaches names to faces just in case.

Corrections officers don't escape the scrutiny, not when he's got literally nothing better to do, so he starts paying attention to their name patches, learns their schedules and watches their habits. Who they avoid looking at says just as much about them as who they rough up if given an excuse to, and Stiles keeps a tally of which ones are probably in some of the inmate's pockets and which are more likely to not act deaf if he ever needs to call for help.

The number is depressingly low.

They walk back from the chapel in a loose string, the kind that looks orderly enough to pass muster but frays wherever the hall widens. Late morning recall means carts are still running, and it sounds like somebody in laundry has the squeakiest wheel on the East Coast.

A CO at the far end calls his usual “Keep the lane clear,” as they move along.

People shift without looking at Stiles, an invisible bubble of space blooming around him even here. It gives him room to slide to the right and let a rolling rack he'd seen turn into the corridor wobble past the convex mirror. He clocks the camera cone out of habit as the rack cuts through it and, just for a blink, there’s a blind spot.

That’s when a shoulder finds his ribs.

It’s not a swing — it's not even enough for a write-up. A shoulder and forearm slam into Stiles’s right side, pinning his ribs to the cinderblock, and reads as a careless bump to anyone glancing up.

“Eyes low if you wanna keep ‘em, Stilinski,” says a voice he takes a moment to recognize, soft and satisfied.

Niles usually hangs around either laundry or the infirmary, and without his smile, he looks like a misplaced geometry teacher — neat hair, clean nails, a face that incites boredom — who somehow wandered in.

Stiles places his left palm flat on the wall, open and visible, while his right hand stays open at chest height without closing into a fist, because fists become problems. He meets Niles’s eyes with an unimpressed look and peels his wrist off while taking a half step back with his right foot to shift his hips. The movement redirects Niles forward when he leans to keep the pressure and overcommits, then the rolling cart’s handle clipping Niles’s hip, making him stumble backward into a linen bin with a breathy ‘oof’ and a thump of canvas and metal.

“Floor’s uneven,” he says to no one in particular, because it is, and because it worked last time. Someone snorts like they almost laughed and thought better of it.

He didn't even need to ask gravity for a hand this time.

“Watch the carts!” Malcolm barks from somewhere behind the rack, pure theater to keep the pipeline moving.

The CO at the far end glances up late. “Keep it moving,” he repeats, too bored to be helpful.

Stiles obliges, though his ribs throb where the initial press landed for a few more seconds before it starts to fade.

Niles gets out of the bin, smooths his sleeve, and checks the corridor. “You don’t belong on this side of the carts,” he warns quietly. “Staff-watched corridors make people nervous.”

“I’m walking back to housing,” Stiles says, without stopping or speeding up.

“Then walk,” Niles hisses.

He doesn’t touch him again.

The yard is thinned out around the bars, most of the inmates either pulled into a game of basketball or entertained by it, or at least the few bets going around to fill the time when there's nothing else to do with it. Stiles finishes a set on the pull-up bar, drops to the gravel, and reaches for the water fountain.

Shaw steps in from the side before he gets there. There's no contact, but the pressure is there, and Stiles steps back on reflex, shoulders touching the pull-up upright. Metal rattles and a CO glances over, then looks away.

“Your lane isn’t near laundry,” Shaw informs him like it matters, which Stiles hadn't realized it did until that exact moment.

Stiles keeps his hands down at his sides, open. “Why do you care where I walk?”

The man's eyes track the nearest camera and come back. “Keep your head down, like you did at the start. Didn’t you want boring?”

“I do,” Stiles confirms. “But I also don’t want people shouldering me into walls,” he adds, pretty sure this is related to the incident with Niles, who started it in the first place.

“That’s not my problem,” He shrugs like he couldn't care less. “Stay in your lane.”

“What lane is that?” Stiles asks, tone all curiosity with none of the probing he really wants to do. “Because you seem real invested in the map.”

Shaw’s jaw tightens once. “Don’t you know, kid? Curiosity killed the cat.”

He steps back half a pace, still inside arm’s reach.

Stiles holds his ground, because he didn't exactly ask for this bone, but if it's just being thrown then who is he to refuse. “So what’s at laundry that needs killing cats over?”

Shaw gives him a long look. “Walk where you’re walked. Use the yard. Use the chapel. That’s it.” He punctuates with pauses and turns like he’s done with it.

Stiles’ impulse control lasts two steps — which is a personal record — and he raises his voice just enough to carry. “The rest of the saying is ‘satisfaction brought it back’!”

Heads in the yard turn. One of Shaw’s guys shifts his weight like he’s waiting for a signal. Shaw stops for half a second, doesn’t turn, and keeps walking. No signal.

The CO’s gaze passes over Stiles and moves on, nothing to see there.

Stiles exhales, rolls his shoulders once, and files the new data: Shaw thinks laundry matters enough not to want him close, and cameras don’t bother him if nothing looks like a fight. He wipes his palms on his pants, gets his water, and returns to the bar, mind at a buzz.

Interesting.

Stiles is halfway back from chow when Wilkins taps the rail with his baton. “You. Classification wants five minutes.”

He steps out of the line, “Now?”

“Now.” Wilkins walks him down the main hall, keys the side door by the chapel, and gestures him into a short service corridor. Stiles catalogs the room: concrete floor, one rolling rack, a locked supply cage. There's a camera at the far end, and a convex mirror at the near end. Wilkins points to a spot between the rack and the cage. “Wait here,” he orders, then steps back through the door.

The lock slides with the kind of finality Stiles doesn't appreciate.

The hall is quiet. Stiles keeps his hands loose at his sides and counts breaths. On eight, the service door on the laundry side opens a hand’s width and three men slip through before closing it behind them.

He clocks Hicks and Dwayne, and a third one he can't place, but most importantly he realizes what they're carrying as they walk closer. Hicks has a toothbrush handle with a bright razor edge, Dwayne's got a sock swaying in his hand that looks weighted at the toes, and Nameless straight up has a short, ugly blade in a closed fist.

They spread without looking at each other, like they practiced it, and their intent hits him like a cold wind — steady, focused, no bluff. Kill, he realizes, not scare. These guys aren't here to talk.

Stiles moves.

He angles left so the rolling rack blocks Hicks for a second and compresses Nameless toward the wall. Dwayne commits first, shoulder turned, sock low. Stiles steps inside the arc before it rises, jams Dwayne’s biceps with his left forearm, clamps the striking arm to his ribs, grabs the back of Dwayne’s head, and drives his face into the rack’s crossbar once. Dwayne drops, and the sock lands with a dull thud.

One down, two to go.

Nameless lunges with the shiv, so Stiles meets the wrist with both hands, turns it outward, and shoves the forearm hard against the edge of the supply cage. Bone cracks. The blade falls. Stiles sweeps Nameless’s legs and plants a knee between the shoulder blades, sliding him so his forehead touches the cage base. He doesn’t move again.

That makes two.

Hicks clears the rack and comes in low with the razor. Stiles backs one step to make space, then kicks the rolling rack straight into his shins. The man stumbles, and Stiles takes the chance to slap the razor wrist hard enough to break his grip, then grabs the back of Hick's head, and bounces it off the cinderblock. collapses to his knees and stays there, breathing.

Stiles scans for more, but none come. Three strikes, you're out.

He collects the razor and the shiv with a rag from the supply shelf, wipes his hands, and tucks both under the nearest linen bundle on the rack because the last thing he needs found on his cell are weapons. He nudges the sock halfway under the slumped man’s thigh, then checks his own shirt: a scuff at the ribs, no blood. Good enough.

Stiles closes his eyes for one second and calms his breathing, pulling the cloak up — sound dull, outline softened, the trick he uses to make the eye slide off him — before timing the convex mirror’s angle, stepping past the camera cone while keeping close to the wall, and easing the chapel door open with two fingers.

The cloak holds, the main hall is clear, and he walks the twenty meters back to the flow of inmates headed to the tier without changing pace. At the sally port, he nods to the CO and goes straight to his cell.

Five minutes later, alarms don’t sound, and he breathes just a little easier.

Stiles keeps his face neutral through count, listens to the hallway noise settle and files the data: Wilkins didn’t leave a log. Three men walked through a locked door for a job, not a message. Someone with access wanted him gone. He has no proof, and he doesn’t need any right now.

He’s where the cameras think he’s been all along.

Chapter Text

They call it a ‘routine’ shakedown, which is almost funny in a place where routine means the same two square meters of floor. The rumor arrives first, skittering tier to tier ahead of the cart squeaks and the jangling gait of keys. There was ‘an incident’ somewhere else.

Sure, incident. Funny way to spell ‘murder attempt’.

Stiles stands for count with his face straight and his hands easy at his sides, and when the door pops, he keeps the same calm as two officers step inside like they’re walking into a staged photograph of law and order.

They make a show of it. Mattress flipped, rolled-up blanket shaken and dumped. They tug at the vent grate, at the bars, at the underside of the bolted shelf where he keeps a chapel paperback tucked spine-up. One CO — he hasn't seen this one before but his name patch says Richards — yanks the vent twice and frowns when it doesn’t rattle. The hush sigil laid weeks ago is a thin, greasy ghost over graphite and pencil scuff, no more suspicious than grime to the untrained eye, and the air from the duct hisses out in a barely-there exhale.

Out in the corridor Wilkins leans on a rail and pretends indifference. He doesn’t come in. He doesn’t say corridor or classification or anything at all that would tie him to a service door that should’ve been locked and wasn’t.

They glance at the door, at the hinge, at the floor. They find nothing, as they ought to. Stiles wasn't dumb enough to nick the weapons, they just didn't look hard enough for them.

Afterwards, he puts the mattress back himself, grabs his things off the floor, and wonders if maybe he should have kept his mouth shut.

But really, where's the fun in that?

The next day in the yard, it's all about geometry: sightlines, angles, the clockwork of bodies orbiting tables. Stiles skips the track, picks a seat with the camera at his back, and settles in to watch the movement.

Shaw sits down next to him with the friendly indifference of someone dropping into a bus stop bench, then slides a look over the rest of the yard like he's doing Stiles the favor of acknowledging he exists.

“Seems like things have been going your way,” He doesn’t smile.

Stiles shrugs, “I’m not taking on any obligations.”

He doesn't say ‘it's more like they haven't quite gone your way’, because a survival instinct is something he still has, if barely.

Shaw taps one finger on the bench, once. “I’m talking about removing obligations, actually. The collectors, the casuals, the accidents. Men who drift into your lane and make it messy.”

“I’m good,” he assures, one step away from flippant.

“You’re surviving,” Shaw corrects. “I’m offering you choices.” He tilts his chin toward C-block’s windows. “Starting with picking your next celly before intake day rearranges all the furniture.”

The temptation is the size of a pebble — small, mean, exactly the right shape to get caught in your shoe and make you consider stopping. Stiles imagines a safer stranger. He imagines the luxury of not having to hover halfway to sleep every night waiting for the sound of intent at the threshold to tip from curiosity to decision.

And then remembers there's no one who's safe coming to this place, not really.

“No tabs,” Stiles doesn’t look up. “No trades. I’m not signing for anything.”

Shaw’s stillness is disciplined, so it doesn't crack. “You mistake me,” he says lightly. “This is charity.”

“No, it isn’t,” Stiles shakes his head, voice bland. “We’re done.”

For three seconds Shaw does nothing at all. Then he nods as if Stiles has answered a test question incorrectly but not offensively, rises, and leaves with his gravity intact. Stiles breathes in counts until the whistle blows them all back inside. He walks the most staff-visible path, on purpose, memorizing camera cones and blind patches for the hundredth time.

If you can’t be safe, be legible.

Night in C-tier isn’t quiet so much as predictable — the vents do their white-noise thing, someone talks in their sleep, a snore is muffled by the distance of a couple walls — and Stiles is on his back in the bottom bunk, pretending it counts as rest. He keeps his eyes half-closed and tracks the way light shifts down the run with every bed check — bright smear, bars, duller again — like a weird lighthouse.

Tonight is the same until it isn’t. The light bounces and moves on at the cell to his left, then backs up that half step that means a second look. Stiles keeps his face turned toward the bars and waits.

Greene’s beam slides off the bars and settles low, lighting concrete and the edge of Stiles’ mattress as he stops at the door, clearly aware that Stiles is wide awake. “Been hearing some whispers at night,” He comments, voice pitched low so it doesn't travel further. It’s not accusatory, more curious than anything, as if one favor — unprompted but not unappreciated — earns him at least the right to ask. “Anything I should know?”

Stile's brain does the fast kind of math he's good for as he sits up to talk without feeling weird about it. He could say the truth — there's probably something going on in laundry, Shaw talks like a businessman but feels like a puppeteer, three guys he'd never traded a word with tried to kill him and Wilkins probably helped set it up — but that kind of truth doesn't come with a backspace, and ‘snitches get stitches’ isn't a saying just because it rhymes. It's the kind of brand he doesn't need in this place, right alongside ‘fed’.

No need to make his stay more difficult than it has to be.

“Nothing I can pin to a person,” he settles on. “Just… some guys don’t love me clocking rooms. I count doors, corners, who posts up under which camera, who favors which bench. Looks like I’m taking notes, even when I’m not.”

It’s not even a lie, he is always taking notes. Not on paper, not out loud, but he is a walking sketchbook of angles and exits. It’s his default setting. He tried to turn it off in high school, but it didn't take, and then it was too useful to stop.

The light beam twitches an inch, and Greene's face shifts into something not quite a frown but halfway there. “That makes some men itchy.”

“I’ve noticed,” Stiles deadpans.

He doesn’t add that he’s already rerouted himself away from laundry like it’s a hot stove and started choosing the paths that keep him in camera cones longer. It’s ridiculous that the eye in the ceiling feels safer than people, but here they are.

The radio gives a little click down the run and Greene turns his head to listen for anybody else’s footsteps. When nothing immediate happens, he tips the flashlight a fraction — less glare, more conversation that still reads like not-conversation to anyone casually scanning — and tilts his pitch even lower.

“Be careful,” he warns, not with a lecturing tone but in a way that says he'd rather not drag his potentially bleeding self out from under a table later.

“Always am,” Stiles assures, half bravado, half scar-tissue. He lets it sit, then adds some actual reassurance, “I keep to the visible routes. No shortcuts, lots of programs. Chapel's nice enough.”

“Good.” Greene’s beam drifts to the empty half of the cell and back in a casual sweep. “Classification’s moving bodies on Thursday. You might not keep this cell to yourself,” he informs, and Stiles notices a tinge of apology in it, as if the guy owes him a decent night's sleep. What even? “Thought you might want a heads up.”

Stiles keeps his face easy, but his stomach does that tiny elevator-drop thing. Right. The musical chairs of incarceration, now with more chairs. He’s been spoiled — if you can call being locked in a box alone spoiled — by a few weeks without a stranger’s breathing five feet away.

“Copy,” he says, because he likes the way it makes him sound like someone else who knows what he’s doing. He tips his chin at the blank, folded blanket on the top bunk. “I’ll adjust.”

Greene nods, final, and doesn't linger. He gives the bars one last, professional sweep of light that hits nothing but dust, and then he’s moving on like it was any other check.

The dark reassembles itself as the flashlight gains distance. Stiles exhales into it, rolling the warning around in his mind. Four days until new faces, new reads, and being cataloged by more men who will decide whether he’s prey, furniture, or a problem.

Great.

Stiles signs in for therapy with two purposes: fill in a time slot with something that puts him in a visible place with limited company, and maybe wrangle a journal out of it if all goes well.

The room looks the same as the GED orientation, and doesn't smell much different. There's ten chairs, one clipboard, and the counselor is a civilian with tired kindness and a sensible cardigan that has seen better winters. He sits in the back corner near the door and tries to look like he wants to be there, which isn't difficult when he's hoping to avoid every other option that isn't the inside of his cell.

There’s talk. Some of it is real, some of it is theater. He recognizes the emotions — grief, anger, fatigue — and soothes the edges of the room when they start turning a little too sharp for his taste. When the counselor hands out composition books ‘for exercises’, he cheers on the inside.

“Do I turn it back in?” a guy asks.

“You can,” she says. “You don’t have to.”

Stiles takes his, black marble cover and all. It’s ordinary in the way of objects that survive institutions: durable, easily replaced, forgettable.

Back in the cell, he writes with care. No names, no dates, and he uses motifs, small marks that stand in for people without pointing at them if any eyes other than his happen to catch a glimpse. He draws the yard from memory and shades the cones where cameras intersect, then does the same for the dayroom before trying to piece the corridors together in his mind for a full picture.

The corridor to the chapel that intersects with the laundry carts earns itself a small little star.

He doesn't sleep so much as drift, dozing on and off in a way that tells him his anxiety's already affecting his brain. It's intake day, though that's probably a few more hours away, and Stiles is considering the idea of fabricating an illusory cellmate and trying to gaslight everyone into believing he's always been there, they just hadn't paid enough attention.

The past few days hadn't exactly been quiet either, with a few ‘accidents’ happening here and there — nothing as obvious as the first one, but clearly targeted — enough to make him uneasy even as he side-stepped them with the kind of fabricated grace he reserves especially to annoy people who want to see him lose face.

A tray slip here, a yard bump there, an attempt to get him in trouble with a CO that doesn't quite pan out the way they might have wanted — it's not one of the patsy ones, so he doesn't fall for it — and even a towel pull that nearly pushes Stiles to lose his cool. He doesn't, but the offender slips on the wet bathroom so badly there's a bang when his forehead hits the floor, and no one comes any closer while the blood stain from a likely head injury washes away like it was never there.

Morning comes whether he wants it to or not. Boots start moving in a pattern that isn’t bed checks — more bodies, more purpose.

He swings his legs down and tidies things up: blanket squared, paperback out where it reads as ‘not hiding anything’, composition notebook parked in plain view like the world’s most boring homework. 

“Count!” Rolls the run, making him head to the door.

He stands easy, eyes up-but-not-challenging, gets the blink that means his numbers match yesterday, and listens. The officers don’t peel off for chow, instead they hover.

Okay, he holds in a sigh as he sits back down on the bottom bunk, placements before breakfast.

A few cells down, he hears a door open. There's soft footsteps, a guided turn, then metal snicks shut. Stiles mentally rehearses a neutral hello and deletes it. First words become your brand here, so maybe let the other guy go first.

Keys again, closer now.

His lock clunks, and the door hums back on its track. Through the bars he can see the officers, then the held shape of someone just out of center.

Stiles fixes his eyes on the hinge and waits.

Chapter Text

The first thing he notices is the guy's size, mostly with relief that he's not getting a celly twice as wide as him that could crush him in his sleep — though he doesn't expect to be doing much of that in the future — and instead his new roommate is slender — not the unhealthy kind he's seen in some inmates — and taller than him by a good three inches. He's nearly fresh from the shower, evidenced by the humid chin-length brown hair, has the barest start of a stubble that speaks of regular shaving — could mean newly arrested, could mean he had razor benefits in whatever prison he transferred from — and is holding all his stuff in the standard plastic bin they give out on arrival.

Only once he's processed all that does Stiles realize he nearly missed the guy's name when the CO told him to take the unoccupied bunk.

Mentally backtracking to find what he'd missed, Stiles suddenly stills, because the name he almost didn't catch and the man's strangely familiar face finally click together inside his mind. Doctor Spencer fucking Reid, the boy-genius — not much of a ‘boy’ from what he can see, even if his lost puppy look could give Scott's a run for its money — of the Behavioral Analysis Unit, is somehow standing inside his cell. As an inmate.

What is happening in the world outside that could possibly make this make sense?

Stiles wouldn't call himself a fanboy, because that's childish and should only apply to k-pop idols and Hollywood stars, but he may or may not be quite familiar with the BAU, at least from an outsider's perspective. It had been one of the units he'd been aiming towards before being recruited into the JTTF and realizing his position there was much more useful against the hunters threatening his pack — as well as many other innocents — and their ilk. So maybe he'd followed a BAU case or two — dozen — from the sidelines, whenever it popped up in the media or pinged his radar in the agency itself, which means that he feels entirely qualified to declare that the kind of person he assumes Reid is — even if extrapolated from case reports, office gossip and media appearances — definitely doesn't belong on the inside of a prison cell.

The call of “Count!” for the second time that morning snaps him out of his thoughts, and Stiles realizes he's probably been staring at his new cellmate like an idiot.

Still, there's not time to apologize before they're standing at the door, so his mind ends up drifting away again because sure, he understands the point of a headcount before intake, to make sure everyone's where they're supposed to be after a whole night mostly unattended, but another one after? Are they really incompetent enough that there's a need to verify if they haven't somehow lost an inmate in the time it takes to settle everyone into their assigned cells?

Actually, scratch that, it sounds entirely possible.

By the time they're being marched down to breakfast, the window for that apology is long gone — no talking on transit. It's only after Stiles has already got a tray in his hands as he shuffles along the meal line that he realizes the agent's droopy mop of brown hair — he shouldn't judge, his own is already getting way too long — is nowhere to be seen in the sea of inmates, old and new, in their tier.

Damn it.

He finds him again in the yard, then almost wishes he didn't.

Hicks, Dwayne, and the previously nameless ‘Little T’ — well, nameless in his mind, not in real life — seem to have penned the agent near the bleachers, all wide shoulders, high chins and inflated chests, looking down on someone they obviously see as prey. Stiles can't spot if anything physical is going on, but that doesn't seem to matter for his feet since they start moving at the sight, straight toward the group like it's not a terrible idea to interfere in something that doesn't concern him.

Then he sees Hicks shove Reid back with a hand on his chest when the agent tries to walk away — not violently, just more posturing — and decides fuck that, I'm not just gonna sit and watch this go on, like the impulsive idiot he is. Because he might have managed to look away from anyone else in the same situation, but that's a fellow agent who's somehow found himself in this shithole, and he can't help but think he would have appreciated some interference of the benevolent kind if he was in the same situation as this guy is now.

Either way, it's too late, because- “Hicks,” he's already stepped close to the bleachers and opened his big mouth. “Dwayne, Little T,” he nods, as if they're all being very civilized. “What's happening over here?” Stiles asks like he's inquiring about the weather.

Little T — the redhead who'd tried to shank him not too long ago — takes a half-step back on reflex, then seems to realize he's done it and undoes the movement, looking annoyed.

“Stilinski,” Dwayne drawls, “This isn't your lane, kid. This guy,” he pokes Reid's sternum and Stiles notices how the agent holds his ground even though his body tenses at the contact, “stole from Milos.”

It takes him a moment to place the name, but he remembers Milos usually hangs close to the food counter and sometimes taxes people out of their trays. It didn't fly with Stiles, and apparently not with Reid either.

“I-I didn't steal from Milos,” Reid interjects, tone soft and just slightly confused, as if he genuinely doesn't understand how these men could have misunderstood whatever situation they're referring to. “That was my food.”

“No, that was a tribute,” Little T corrects sharply. “Everyone has to pay when they join the group.”

“Unless you're a lone wolf,” Hicks motions at him and Stiles has the entirely inappropriate urge to chuckle, because ‘lone wolf’ has never applied to him in his life, as his pack would attest. “Who won't last if he keeps sticking his nose in.”

“Bet I last longer than you,” Stiles quips, and steps so his shoulder edges half in front of the agent. “Why don't you go and tell Milos it was just a misunderstanding and everything's square?” Is his lighthearted suggestion. And then, because he's still not about to start a tab, “He can have my lunch tray to make up for the trouble.”

A beat, and then Dwayne's brows go up, “Didn't know you were staking claims, Stilinski.” A chest rise, a half-step forward, “sure you wanna do that?”

Stiles only barely refrains from rolling his eyes, “Think back on the last time you came at me three-on-one,” he advises in a slower tone, as if talking to someone who has difficulty understanding. “Not that it happened, of course. Just food for thought,” since yours are starving, he tactfully doesn't add.

Little T looks about ready to take the advice, but Hicks and Dwayne stall for a beat.

“He's with me,” Stiles spells out — before he can think better of it — so even they can't mishear. “Piss off.”

He lets his aura slip, just for a moment — a degree of cold in the air, a tiny pressure shift that makes prey feel the snare — but it's enough.

They posture, scoff, and peel away.

“Why did you do that?” Reid's voice startles him and he pivots to face the doctor, posture softening now that the threat is gone.

He stares again, for just a moment, because the analytical glint in the man's eyes catches him by surprise. “Uh-” He scrambles for a reply, because why indeed, and settles on, “so they'd leave you alone?” hating that it sounds more like a question than a statement.

His social settings apparently only have three dials, neatly labeled ‘mom friend’, ‘sarcastic menace’ and ‘awkward mess’. Guess which one he ended up selecting at the lack of imminent danger? The first two don't count.

“Why would you?” The agent presses. “You don't know me.”

The reminder of that particular fact makes his ears start to burn, and he glances around — no one in hearing range, still in sight of cameras, there's a CO that isn't Wilkins by the closest wall — before lowering his voice anyway, “I do, actually. I mean, sort of. Doctor Reid, right? I've seen you on TV.” He offers, because the guy has zero reason to trust him already, no need to make something up.

His eyes widen almost imperceptibly, but that's the only tell Stiles catches. “So you know who I am,” the cautious tone tells him exactly what Reid's just realized.

“I'm not planning on telling anyone, don't worry.” He immediately assures, but isn't surprised when it doesn't make the man any less tense.

“I appreciate that…” The pause goes on for a beat too long before he realizes that was his cue.

“Stiles,” he fills in the gap, offering a hand.

There's another moment of delay before Reid takes it with a quick, neat shake. “Thank you,” He says, still cautious, but apparently not enough to deter his politeness.

Stiles shrugs like it's nothing before settling down on the bleachers, motioning for the doctor to do the same. Reid blinks, then sits down with some distance between them.

“Alright, here’s the ten-cent tour,” Stiles says, ticking fingers. “This is the only exercise you’ll see unless you pull a job. Showers right after yard are a bottleneck, hang back and leave with the last group. Programs beat dayroom: fewer people, more cameras. If you get mail, grab it fast. Breakfast and lunch are politics, if Mendez offers more protein, say no unless you want a tab you can’t pay.”

Five fingers up, he folds them down one by one. “Stay away from laundry, something’s brewing and it’s not good. Chapel’s the closest thing to neutral if you need thirty quiet minutes. Phones are bait: no three-ways, no ‘I’ll front you minutes’, that’s debt with interest. If someone says ‘tribute,’ ‘tax,’ ‘rent,’ ‘hold,’ ‘front,’ or ‘spot you,’ that’s all code for debt. Debt is leverage, leverage is problems. If you have to pick between being rude and being in debt? Be rude. And when in doubt, walk toward a camera or a corrections officer and pretend you forgot something.” He taps the bench. “Unless it’s Wilkins or Ruiz, then it’s a coin-flip whether that makes it better or worse.”

Reid listens without interrupting, and Stiles almost apologizes for the rant and offers to go a little slower, but doesn't get the chance.

“Officers,” he prompts, “any other names I should know?”

Stiles tips his chin. “Podium is Harlan. Clipboard, whistle, actually does the job. Gate is Ruiz, coin-flip on mood. Wall-” he angles his head, “ is Wilkins.”

Reid’s mouth thins. “He was there during intake,” the implication that it was not exactly a pleasant interaction is clear.

Stiles glances at the officer in question before looking back at Reid, “Is he the reason you're not where you're supposed to be?” He asks, because the agent doesn't seem the type to turn down protective custody.

Reid tilts his head slightly, eyes moving like he's recalling something, “It's likely.”

Stiles frowns, but hides it quickly enough. “Wilkins is selectively deaf and blind, just not for our benefit. Don’t give him excuses and don’t expect help.”

Reid nods once, filing it. His gaze flicks past the gym pit, to the laundry corridor door that’s just visible from this angle. “You said ‘stay away from laundry’. That’s… not a general caution.”

“Learned the hard, three-on-one way,” Stiles clarifies exactly nothing. “You don’t want to be near where carts move, that's all. If someone offers you a laundry shift ‘no tax’, it’s not a gift.”

“Understood,” Reid says, like he's putting together a checklist.

They sit for a minute. Stiles watches the yard and wonders if trouble might find his new cellmate if he decides to walk the track. 

Reid breaks the quiet first, measured. “What’s the cost here?”

“For what?” He looks back with a slight frown.

Reid doesn't waver. “For stepping in.”

Stiles shrugs like it’s simple. “A lunch tray to Milos. I said it out loud.”

“You said it's better to be rude than in debt,” The agent insists, and Stiles huffs a chuckle at having his words thrown right back at him.

“Fair enough,” he weighs his options before speaking again. “Look, I don't really want anything from you other than to not see this place eat you alive. If you really need to know why, we can talk about it later,” he motions with his chin toward the closest group to the bleachers. “Walls have ears.”

Reid accepts it with a single nod. Suspicion doesn’t leave — first day, it shouldn’t — but it cools into observation, not alarm.

“Showers will be after this,” Stiles says, back to logistics. “We take the last slots. Keep the towel tight. If someone steps on your sandal, you step back, not sideways.”

Reid glances at his feet, then up. “Why not sideways?”

“Sideways pins you to a wall, back gives you a lane.” Stiles lifts a brow. “You’ll feel it when it happens.”

The doctor's brows furrow. “I’d rather not.”

Stiles's mouth twitches. “Same.”