A/N - Oh look, a new chapter. Finally. Sorry. Guess I got a little stuck. I feel like I had more things planned for this chapter, but I don't entirely remember them or feel inclined to search for them. I don't really do quiet chapters all that well, if you can't tell. But here it is. A new chapter. At long last. Not sure when the next one will come. Most of July and all of August are going to be really busy for me, and in August, I'll be in China and I'm not sure what kind of Internet I'll have access to. So enjoy this kind of meh chapter until I can get back to you with something more exciting.

Chapter Nineteen

McCall Family Vacation

"No."

"Scott, come on." Melissa gives him an exasperated look as she sorts through the dusty bin she pulled out of the basement.

"No, Mom." Scott folds his arms and pouts.

"This isn't a discussion."

"I'm not going on a camping trip with you and Crowley!"

"You don't have a choice in the matter. Go upstairs and pack some clothes."

Scott huffs, wrinkles his nose, sighs again, but hops down from the counter and plods upstairs, dragging his feet the whole way, making sure to stomp up the steps and slam the door behind him.

"Gus will be here in an hour to pick us up!" Melissa calls.

Scott flops down on his bed rather than doing as his mother instructed. He pulls out his phone and texts the Pack group chat.

Puppy Dog Eyes (10:21AM): Please tell me there's some kind of dire Pack emergency that requires my immediate attention and will hold said attention for the rest of the weekend?

Horny Baseball Bat (10:22AM): no why?

Puppy Dog Eyes (10:22AM): Mom is making me go on a camping trip with her and Crowley.

Horny Baseball Bat (10:23AM): HA

Horny Baseball Bat (10:23AM: i'll go with you if you want. or take your place.

Puppy Dog Eyes (10:24AM): She won't even let me bring Allison or Isaac! Said it was family only.

Katniss Everdeen (10:25AM): I thought I counted as family.

Horny Baseball Bat (10:26AM): sorry bro everything's quiet

Gay Gunslinger (10:27AM): don't listen to anything crowley says about sam and me he likes to make shit up

Puppy Dog Eyes (10:28AM): Fuuuuuuck. Okay fine I have to go pack.

Horny Baseball Bat (10:28AM): have fun lmao

Scott drops his phone on his face with a groan. Where's a good supernatural crisis when you need one? But there's nothing he can do about it, so he rolls off his bed and drags a duffel from his closet, shoving clothes inside, then he heads back downstairs to help Melissa sort through their dusty camping supplies and figure out what still works and what doesn't. Most of the stuff is either rusted or moth eaten.

Crowley rolls up in a black Cadillac with a growling engine at exactly 11:30 and knocks on the door. Scott tries not to gag as Melissa flings her arms around him and gives him a kiss. Crowley is still dressed in one of his black suits and his long coat.

"You're wearing that camping?" Scott ask, leaning against the counter with his arms folded.

"I don't do outdoors clothes," Crowley drawls. He flicks an invisible speck of dirt from his sleeve.

Scott raises an eyebrow at him.

"Scott, help me take everything out to the car," Melissa says, stooping to grab one end of the big gear box, but Crowley snaps his fingers, and everything disappears.

"All taken care of," he says with a smirk.

Melissa giggles and smacks Crowley in the chest. "Oh, you're very useful."

"I aim to please."

Scott fake gags. Melissa glares at him for a moment.

Crowley leads the way out to his car, holding Melissa's hand, and Scott trails along behind them, arms still folded firmly across his chest. He, of course, gets shunted into the backseat, which in the Cadillac means that his legs are squashed up to his chest, and there aren't any seatbelts. Melissa suggested that they take her car since it's larger, roomier, and more suited to the terrain, but no, Crowley has to travel in style.

The campground is one Scott and Melissa used to go to a lot, back when Scott's dad was around, before Melissa got super busy at the hospital, and before Scott became a werewolf and a walking magnet for trouble.

Okay, maybe he was a walking trouble magnet even before the bite.

No, that was definitely Stiles.

The two-hour car ride is absolute torture for Scott. Melissa and Crowley sit in the front, talking and laughing, and Melissa has her hand on Crowley's thigh which Scott does not need or want to see. Yes, of course he wants his mom to be happy, but the King of Hell? That sounds like a recipe for heartbreak.

Crowley parks by their campsite, and Scott tumbles gratefully from the car, wondering if either of the adults will notice if he tries to sidle off into the trees. "Don't even think about it," Melissa says before he's taken a step. Scott sighs. Sometimes he thinks she's psychic. So he pops the trunk instead, reaching down to grab two of their bags.

"Allow me," Crowley says, preparing to snap his fingers.

"No." Melissa cuts him off. "That defeats the point of camping. We set it up by hand. Scott, help Gus with the tents."

Scott knows better than to argue. He digs out the two tent sacks and passes one to Crowley, leading the way to the flattest patch of land where the grass has been worn away by all the other tents over the years. "Have you ever set up a tent before?" he asks as he drops his bags.

Crowley gives him a flat look. "Do I look like I've ever set up a tent?"

"Right, um, well, it's pretty easy." Scott begins to pull out the poles and stakes. "You shouldn't have any trouble."

"I could have this all set up in a second," Crowley points out, staring down at his tent bag with a curled lip but making no move to unpack it.

"Not everything can or should be done with magic," Scott says.

"I disagree with that."

"Why? Because it's easy?"

Crowley blinks languidly, seeming to not hear the sharp bite in Scott's voice. "Yes."

Scott throws down the pole he's been stringing together and spins to face Crowley fully. "Is that what you're going to do when things get hard with my mom? Just magic all the unpleasantness away? Or better yet just disappear? Sam and Dean say you're really good at that."

Crowley has fallen silent, staring at Scott with almost an unguarded look in his eyes, but Scott doesn't give him a chance to respond, turning sharply on his heel and bounding into the trees.

He runs for a long time, finally breaking out of the trees that surround the lake the park is named after. He skids to a halt, the sand spraying up around his heels. The water glitters blue in the sunlight, and the wind creates tiny waves on the surface. Scott slips his shoes off and sits down on the lake's edge so that the water can lap up over his toes.

"Impressive blowout," Crowley says beside him.

Scott jumps a mile into the air and jerks his head around. "What the hell man?"

Crowley stands beside him, hands clasped behind his back, looking out across the water like he's in some kind of pretentious Renaissance oil painting.

"You can't just sneak up on people like that!" Scott scrambles to his feet because he doesn't like the way Crowley towers over him.

"I thought it was impossible to sneak up on you, what with your werewolf abilities," Crowley says. He doesn't look at Scott, but Scott can still see the outline of a smirk on his face.

Scott tries to calm his racing heart, taking deep breathes and staring at the water. "They don't exactly work on people who can just pop into existence wherever they want."

"Your mother is worried about you," Crowley says.

Scott crosses his arms. "Did she send you to find me?"

"No, she actually said to leave you be and you'd come back on your own. I wanted to talk to you."

Scott eyes Crowley. It's never a good thing when your teacher wants to talk to you in private, and doubly so when said teacher is an actual demon and the King of Hell. "About what?" Scott asks warily.

Crowley finally moves, taking something from his pocket and holding it out to Scott without looking. Scott takes it. A small, black box lies in his palm, the velvet soft on his fingers. Scott cracks the lid open to reveal a silver band with tiny rubies embedded in it, forming a wavy pattern.

"I'm going to ask Melissa to marry me," Crowley explains. "I wanted to tell you first."

"What would you do if I say no?" Scott asks, studying the ring. It's beautiful; just the sort of design Melissa would love.

"Ask her anyways," Crowley says. "I love her. But I'd rather the two of us not be at odds with each other."

Scott hands Crowley the box back. "Let me think about it."

Crowley takes the ring and tucks it into his pocket. "Very well. See you back at camp." Then he disappears, leaving the beach silent and still again.

Scott digs a few stones from the sand and skips them across the lake, watching the ripples spread. Crowley wants to marry his mother. When Scott thinks of the two of them together, he has to admit that he can't see it. He doesn't understand what Melissa sees in Crowley, didn't understand it even back before he knew Crowley was the King of Hell. Scott throws another stone.

But he's seen the way Melissa smiles at Crowley, when she thinks no one else is looking. He remembers that smile from the time when things were still good with his father, when she still loved the man. After he broke her heart, Scott thought he would never see that smile again.

But now it's back.

Out of stones, Stiles stripes down to his underwear and dives into the lake, letting the cold water envelop him. He swims down, down, down, until a darkness envelops him that even his werewolf eyes can't pierce.

But at the same time, Crowley will break Melissa's heart. How can he not? He's the King of Hell. Those years after Scott's father left were some of the worst in Scott's life, and he's had a lot of really, really bad years. Scott doesn't want to see his mother go through all that again.

Scott surfaces for air, spraying water from his mouth. He sighs as he floats there. He knows what he has to do.

So Scott paddles back to shore and finds a sunny patch of grass near the trees to dry off in, stretching himself out. The droplets tickle as they run down his sides. Once he's dry, he puts his clothes on and makes his way back to the campsite, moving slowly through the forest.

When he breaks out of the trees, he sees that the campsite has been set up, the tents put together, wood stacked in the fire pit, and the coolers and bags of food on the picnic bench. Melissa and Crowley sit in cloth camping chairs by the empty fire pit, their fingers laced together.

Scott takes a deep breath and walks up to them. "Can I talk to you?" he says to Crowley.

"Sure." The demon squeezes Melissa's hand and then stands and follows Scott a little ways away from the campsite. "What is it?" If Scott didn't know better, he'd think Crowley looks a little nervous.

"Propose to her," Scott says, having to force the words out. "Whatever my mother decides, I'll go along with."

Crowley nods. "Thank you."

"Whatever."

Crowley begins to turn around, but Scott snaps his arm out and seizes a fistful of the demon's shirt, yanking him in close. Heat pools in Scott's eyes as they begin to glow, and his fangs sprout. "If you hurt her, I will send you right back to whatever dark hole you crawled out of."

"Sure, kid." Crowley brushes Scott's hand off. "You poked holes in my favorite shirt."

Crowley returns to the campfire, and Scott follows soon after, settling into the third chair. "Did you go for a swim?" Melissa asks.

"I went down to the lake," Scott says. "It hasn't changed."

"Not much about this place has," Melissa agrees. "But other things have." She smiles at Crowley, and Stiles wants to vomit a little bit.

"I've lived a long time," Crowley says. Scott holds back an eye roll. He senses a monologue coming. "Most of that time was spent as the King of the Crossroads. Make a deal. Grant a desire. Return in ten years to claim the soul so they can be tortured for eternity. Not much changes in Hell. That's kind of the point. Then the Winchesters came into my life, and things began to change, and not exactly for the better."

"But you became the King of Hell," Scott points out.

Crowley rolls his eyes. "Probably the worst decision I've ever made. I spend all my days either almost dying or solving every other demon's petty problems. My own form of Hell, I guess. And then I met you." Crowley looks Melissa in the eyes. She turns a little red. "And for the first time in my very long life, I found myself actually wanting to get out of bed each morning to find out what the day would bring."

Scott resists the urge to fake barf. Laying it on a little thick, aren't you, Crowley?

"And so," Crowley gets out of his chair and down on the ground, actually kneeling in the dirt before Melissa, pulling the little, velvet box from his pocket. "Melissa McCall, will you marry me?"

Melissa's hand flies to her mouth, and her eyes begin to water. "Oh, Gus, yes!" She falls out of her chair to wrap Crowley in a hug, kissing him deeply. Scott stands, feeling awkward, and prepares to slide away, but Melissa grabs his leg, and the next thing he knows, he's being dragged into the hug as well. Scott groans inwardly. Just what he wants. A hug between him, his mother, and his soon to be step-demon.

Melissa releases him eventually, and Scott practically leaps back into his chair, wanting to get as far away as possible from that embrace as possible.

As it grows darker, they cook hot dogs over the fire, and then they move on to roasting marshmallows. Melissa is a s'mores goddess, and she has to teach Crowley to make them properly since he keeps burning all his marshmallows like he's trying to send them straight to Hell. When Scott was young, they used to tell scary stories around the campfire, but now that their lives are one big scary story, the practice kind of lost its appeal, so instead, the three of them watch the flames, Melissa and Crowley chatting quietly. Scott should take the Pack camping sometime; that would be a good team building exercise.

Scott likes sleeping outdoors. When it's time for bed, he lies alone in his tent, listening to the crickets chirping and the wind rustling through the leaves. This is why he likes to sleep at Derek's house; it's so far out of town that he can hear the woods all around it. It's peaceful.

In the morning, Scott is tipped out of bed much earlier than he would like as Melissa unzips his tent from the outside and cries, "Rise and shine, sleepy head!"

Scott groans. His phone tells him its 8:04 in the morning. Unfortunately, there is no urgent Pack matter calling him back to town.

"We've got oatmeal!"

Gross. Oatmeal. That's not exactly what Scott would call an enticing breakfast.

Scott drags himself out of his sleeping bag and through the tent flap into the early morning air which is lit by the chirping of birds. Melissa and Crowley sit around the crackling fire, a silver pot sitting on the portable stove top over the flames.

"Why so early?" Scott groans.

"Things to do!" Melissa practically crows.

Scott stares at the bowl of gloop he's handed, brown sugar and raisins sprinkled on top as if that's supposed to make this mess more palatable. He runs his spoon through the oatmeal, lifting a glob up and letting it plop back down again. He sets the bowl aside. Maybe he'll skip breakfast today.

"I thought you and Gus could go fishing today," Melissa says, nursing a cup of coffee, one of those camping specific tin mugs with speckles all over it.

"I don't fish," Scott and Crowley say at the same time.

"You do today," Melissa tells them with a grin.

And so Scott and Crowley find themselves out on the lake in a small dinghy an hour later, holding fishing rods as their lures bob in the water. Scott wears a floppy fisherman's hat, complete with a bajillion different buttons. Crowley incinerated his as soon as they were out of Melissa's sight, though he refuses to do the same for Scott's, choosing instead to snort whenever he looks up and sees the horrid thing on Scott's head.

Scott sighs and shifts on the hard bench, ass aching even though they've only been here for ten minutes. "I thought Mom would want to spend the day with you," he says finally.

Crowley shrugs. "I think she wants us to bond or something."

"Can we just agree that that's not going to happen?"

"Sure, Puppy Dog Eyes."

"I kind of hate you, you know that?"

"I figured."

Neither of them get even a nibble. Scott earns a sunburn for his troubles, but that's about it. Crowley just sits under an umbrella he conjured, refusing to share and reading some kind of leather bound tome written in a script Scott doesn't recognize.

"I'm calling it," Scott says, throwing his rod to the bottom of the boat in disgust.

"Alright then," Crowley agrees, giving the oars a pointed look.

"You can't just magic us back to shore?"

"Wouldn't that be too easy?" Crowley asks.

Scott wants to smack that smirk off Crowley's face. Don't use his own words against him. That's rude. But he collects the oars and shoves them into the water. It only takes him a few, powerful strokes to get back to shore.

"I'm going to take a hike," Scott says.

"You don't need to ask my permission." Crowley flicks dust from his jacket and makes his umbrella disappear.

"I…wasn't asking for it?" God, everything Crowley says and does feels like it's specifically designed to throw Scott off balance. When he looks round, Crowley is gone without a word, leaving Scott alone on the beach.

He rolls his eyes and sets off into the woods, moving in the opposite direction from the campground. He doesn't have a particular destination in mind, just weaves his way down the narrow deer trails, letting his senses expand.

There's a curious smell on the wind, drifting in on the breeze from Beacon Hills. It's faintly rotten, but a dry sort of rot, like bones, mingled with death and a spice Scott doesn't recognize. He sniffs again, locking it into his wolf's memory. He's sure it's nothing, though; probably just a dead animal left too long in the sun. No need to get worried. Things have been quiet lately. Don't wreck that.

(Too quiet).

(The other shoe will drop).

He ignores the thought. The rest of the summer is going to be quiet, and it's going to be nice, and no one else is going to die.

A wave of sadness stops Scott in his tracks, and he collapses against an oak tree. Boyd. He's never lost one of his own before. They've always managed to scrape through by the skin of their teeth. Scott used to think there was some kind of force protecting them, keeping them from harm. His Alpha powers. Derek's. Some kind of higher supernatural power looking out for them because they're the ones trying to protect people from harm.

He knows now how foolish that thought was. Any one of them could die at anytime. It's just a question of who will be next, because in their lives, someone is always going to be next.

There are wolves in these woods; the woman can sense an entire Pack of them, living somewhere nearby the cave she has made her temporary home. She actually has muscles now, red ligaments stretched and woven over bone, though still no skin or power. But maybe these wolves can…offer some assistance. Somewhere in this town, there is magic, just the kind she needs to quicken her return. She just needs to find it.