AN: Okay, so I'm having this problem between my brain and my fingers right now where nothing's working right. I've checked this over a couple of time, but I can't find any way to make me happy with this. So here you go; the third and final installation in the call me beep me if you wanna reach me thingie. And yes, I know, the ending is kinda super cheesy. So sue me if I want Cora to be freaking happy, man.

Disclaimer: I own nothing, suckka.

Peter called her while she was struggling to write a paper on Catcher in the Rye while her foster father watched Castle reruns in his arm chair. She wouldn't have answered the phone if she had known it was Peter calling, but she only glanced at the unknown number and answered it reflexively because it had a Beacon Hills area code.

"Why does everyone else in Beacon Hills have your phone number but me," Peter said. He didn't say hello and he didn't give her time to reply before he launched into the story of how he happened to be at Derek's apartment when her text came in and how hard it had been to dodge around both Derek and Stiles to get her number from Derek's phone, which somehow transformed into a story about that hellion bitch of a furball and how much it hated Peter and how much Peter hated it. Cora shoved her laptop off of her lap before he had even finished the first sentence, hauling herself from the worn green couch and crossing the room in several too long strides to reach her foster father's chair. She dropped down to rest on the arm of it, curling against his shoulder and taking a deep, quiet breath.

Peter was difficult to deal with and something she didn't like to think of very often. Derek had told her, that first day when she had come to in his loft, that Peter had been comatose and had woken up and killed Laura for the alpha's power. He had told her that he killed Peter, after Peter had bitten Scott and killed the people involved in the fire. She hadn't believed him at first, because she could smell Peter in the apartment, fresh and familiar, a half-remembered comfort scent, but then he had explained about Peter possessing Lydia and bringing himself back from the dead. But Peter wasn't hard to deal with in the same way Derek was, because Peter was exactly the same as she remembered. His hair was different and he had a stupid villain goatee, but he smelled the same and he talked the same, using the same biting sarcasm that they had all found funny as children and making the same gestures as he talked and walked. He was exactly as she remembered from six years ago and that was dangerous, because he wasn't. He couldn't be trusted and Cora needed to remember that.

Her foster father shot her a look, raising his eyebrows in a silent question and she shook her head. He didn't say a word, but he put a hand on her knee and squeezed, just a quick thing, but it helped. She breathed and she let herself sink into the sound of his heartbeat, Nathan Fillion's voice chattering on behind it, only making the occasional humming noise to let Peter know she was listening.

When it was over, after only a handful of words from her end and nothing of consequence said from his end, she saved his contact in her phone, just like the others. She titled it Uncle Creeper and Google searched danger warning signs to save as his contact picture, to remind herself at all times that Peter was dangerous.

"You okay there, kid," her foster father asked. She was still curled against his shoulder several minutes after hanging up. "Something wrong with your brother or his boyfriend?"

"Not-yet-boyfriend," she corrected, half-heartedly. She sighed. "Uncle Peter called July 4th on the bet," she said eventually, after Castle had finished a crazy theory on aliens being the killer. Her foster father went very still.

"The dead one," he clarified. She nodded. He nodded back and his knuckles went white around the television controller. The hand on her knee squeezed again, tighter than before, but still not painful.

"If he calls you again," he said, "I will kill him." His heartbeat was as even as a metronome. Her breath caught in her throat and she squeezed her eyes closed, terrified to the core for the first time since leaving Beacon Hills.

"'Course," she choked out. She stood up on shaking legs to go back to the couch and found her foster mother standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, eyes hard and jaw tight. Her eyes flashed yellow and her fangs flickered, there and gone, before she gave Cora a tight smile and vanished back into the kitchen. Cora got the feeling that if her foster mother hadn't a meeting to attend at work the next morning she would have been on the first plane out west and her uncle wouldn't have lived to see the week finish. She sat down on the couch and texted Scott with shaking fingers.

Peter just called. He says he calls July 4th on our bet.

Scott replied just as dinner was called and she read the text as she stood up, her younger brother and sister zooming through the doorway in front of her. fck sht how did he get ur #? u ok?

Fine, she texted back. Her stomach rolled. Just freaked. I'm fine. Don't tell Derek, he'll worry.

Three hour later, Derek knew anyway. Her inbox flooded with his texts and when he called she ignored each one, too tired and stressed out to deal with it. He was just starting to threaten to come back and see her when she had had enough.

Make Derek calm down, Peter riled him up.

On it, Stiles replied, less than a minute later. She threw her phone on the other couch and returned to trying to make sense of the utterly depressing book her teacher had assigned them for winter break. Which, who even assigned books for winter break anyway, she huffed under her breath. It was three days until Christmas, for fuck's sake. Why was she even doing this essay anyway?

"Do your essay," her foster mother called, from upstairs. She didn't even raise her voice. Cora gaped at the ceiling. She heard the woman sigh. "And I'm not reading your mind, honey, so please, just write."

"Not reading my mind my ass."

"Language."

My foster mother can read my mind help.

dont think about gay sex, Isaac responded, immediately. Like he wasn't killing himself trying to write an essay at nine at night.

Fuck you, she texted back, grinning. And then, because she figured why not; Have they fucked yet?

god no but stiles just bailed on the beginning of our winter break minecraft adventure to go see him. maybe you will win this.

Minecraft? Fuck, send me an invite; if I have to write one more line of this essay I will die.

nerd.

She played Minecraft with them for two hours before Stiles got back online, on Derek's XBOX instead of Scott's. She could hear Derek through the headset that was digging into the corner of her jaw, grumbling under his breath but more calm than he had been before. She shifted on the couch when he asked if she was online. Her foster family's littlest child was curled against her hip, using her stomach as a pillow, and he shifted, mumbling under his breath as she wiggled guiltily.

"Derek, stop it," Stiles said, voice crackling through their microphone. "You're making Kitty anxious and that's not nice." There was a meow as their cat recognized her name and she heard Derek sigh, soft, before she heard the faint purring of the cat. Derek was probably curled around Stiles, cat in his lap, while Stiles hunched over the controller. She wanted to see.

"Late night selfies," she whispered into her headset. She pulled her phone off of the arm of the couch and clicked a picture of herself, making sure to catch the way the four year old was curled on top of her and how her controller was balanced on her chest. She sent it to Derek, Stiles, Isaac, and Scott and waited eagerly for their return pictures. Derek didn't even fight Stiles, or at least he didn't verbally, and within the next five minutes there were three new texts in her inbox. She looked at Scott and Isaac's first, giggling at the way they were curled together, heads sharing one pillow. They had sent her separate pictures though they were in both of them together. They made a different set of silly faces in each one, tongues sticking out and eyes scrunched closed.

"Oh, nice one Isaac," Stiles muttered, sarcastic.

"Thank you," Isaac drawled, fighting sarcasm with sarcasm.

"I like Cora's," Derek muttered. If she hadn't had super hearing she probably wouldn't have heard it; Derek and Stiles, like Scott and Isaac, were using a microphone and their television speakers instead of headsets, like her, and he had spoken so quietly she wasn't even sure how the mic had picked it up. She swallowed and couldn't find the words to tell she missed him.

"Course you do," Stiles responded, fond and warm. Isaac gagged quietly over the microphone and Scott snorted, the sound of flesh meeting flesh inching over the connection.

"Ow," Isaac whined. "Abuse, abuse; I'm calling alpha abuse."

"Not a real thing," Cora said. She opened up Stiles' text and felt her face go through a complicated expression as she tried to cringe and awww at the same time. Stiles and Derek were just like she had imagined them, curled together in their pajamas, their damn cat on Derek's lap and Derek's arm thrown over Stiles' shoulder. Stiles was wearing a pair of pajamas Cora recognized as Derek's, which was just, oh my god.

"I like your picture too, Derek," she whispered, swallowing past the feeling of her stomach melting at image of her brother curled around a teenaged cat and a teenaged boy.

Cora didn't win the bet. Lydia, to her furious amazement, didn't win the bet either. The person who did win the bet, however, didn't win by being the closest; no, the Sheriff won by being spot on. Cora almost didn't believe it.

"You're joking," she said, once Isaac picked up the phone. "The Sheriff won? Wasn't he just being parentally optimistic?!"

The Sheriff, upon finding out about the bet nearly nine months before, had placed his wager of the bet on Stiles' 18th birthday. Everyone had nodded along and had made of course, Sheriff noises, because 18 was the legal consent age in California and he was, after all, the Sheriff. They had all then pretended that they had picked dates after Stiles' 18th birthday and the Sheriff pretended that he believed them. But if Isaac was correct they had actually, finally, had sex sometime early that morning. Exactly on Stiles' 18th birthday. Which was just, oh my god.

"I'm supposed to be in math," Isaac responded. His voice echoed a little bit, like he was in the bathroom.

"Are you in the bathroom?"

"Yes," he hissed, "because I was in math class when you called. I had to pretend I had to go to the bathroom and then sprint down the hall to answer you."

"Poor baby," she said. To be fair, she was supposed to be in English class and she was crouched atop the toilet in the bathroom at her own school. Why couldn't Stiles' birthday have been tomorrow, on Saturday? Why Friday? Wasn't the fact that they graduated in five weeks bad enough; did she really need such a stressful event to happen first thing on Friday morning?

"Oh," she said, realization hitting her. "You lost by five weeks."

"Tell me something I don't know," he all but shrieked. "They've been running around each other for literally over a year and then, then, ugh." He ended his sentence with a sigh so heavy it would put a grandmother's grocery bags to shame. Cora found herself grinning from ear to ear, crouched in the stall atop a toilet at 8:15 in the morning. She felt like she had run a mile, like she had when her soccer team had won the championship for the first time in years, like she had when she found a box on her bed on her birthday, the address labeling it from Derek & Stiles & Kitty.

"Stiles had a hickey the size of Canada on his neck and he reeks of Derek, it's so gross," Isaac continued, groaning. "I've got a picture, hold on, let me send it to you."

A teacher without a homeroom caught her in the bathroom ten minutes later, when her legs were beginning to cramp and she couldn't contain her giggles any longer. It was the first detention she had received for phone related reasons in nearly three months, but the picture of Scott wrestling Stiles' shirt away from his neck and Stiles blushing bright red was absolutely worth it. And she had to give her brother that; the hickey was, indeed, the size of Canada.

You leave impressive hickeys.

I will literally pay you to not talk about this ever

Cora laughed her way through the rest of her day, alternating between sending teasing messages to Stiles and soothing Lydia's continued stream of I. DID. THE. MATH. while at the same time gushing with Allison about the whole thing. Scott's only comment on the matter was i told u they would be worse now i fckin told u.

Her foster father laughed so hard his beer came out his nose when she told him about it at dinner. He laughed even harder when she showed him the card she had bought on her way home, which had two bunnies on the front, one small and one big. She had doodled party hats on them both and inside it wrote on the inside Congradulations on fucking like bunnies! Love, Cora. P.S. Please give this ten dollar bill to your dad, Stiles, thanks. Upon seeing the card her foster mother choked on her bite of burger and her foster father laughed so hard he cried. It was that card that lead Stiles to learning about the bet they had all had on his relationship with Derek.

Lydia sent her a picture of Derek and Stiles' faces upon learning of the bet. It was just as funny as she thought it would be, their mouths open, indignation scrawled across their faces. Kitty was perched on Derek's shoulder in the picture and even she looked shocked and offended, or as shocked and offended as a full grown spoiled cat could look. Even that couldn't compare, however, to the picture Stiles sent her just before she walked across the stage, one of all of them dressed up and lined up, the entire pack grinning at the camera. It wasn't until she was walking out on the stage that it hit her that she recognized the building behind the group, the school sign mostly cut out of the clip, but still familiar. It was one she had walked passed every damn school day since junior year, after all, so it had to be familiar. Seconds after she realized that they were at her goddamn graduation she heard them cheering, Isaac and Stiles shouting her name while Allison made a whoooo noise in the back of her throat. She glanced sideways, but couldn't see them for the lights.

She cried the entire length of the stage and the second she was off of it she was down the aisles like a shot, running toward her foster father's heartbeat. She heard a teacher behind her quietly exclaim her name, trying to call her back for her picture, but she ignored them. They were sitting in the back left of the auditorium with her foster family; Derek was sitting in the folding auditorium chair to the left of her foster father, grinning at her like a loon, with Stiles plastered to his shoulder. The rest of his band of maniac misfit teenagers in the row behind them, Isaac holding up her littest foster sibling on his lap, both wearing identical gleeful grins.

She gaped at her brother, limbs trembling, mouth open, and Stiles took a picture on his phone. A second later her phone buzzed, tucked into her bra under her graduation robes, making her flinch. Derek grinned even wider and pressed a kiss to Stiles' forehead while Isaac gagged from the seat directly behid them and her foster brother giggled. The people in the seats around them started to whisper and Cora felt her eyes tear up again.

"Payback, little sis," Derek said. Stiles made an expression that made her want to punch him in the face from over her brother (his boyfriend's) shoulder.

"Be nice," Allison scolded, swatting the back of Derek's shoulder with the graduation program in her hand. She smiled at Cora, all dimples and perfect hair, and Cora couldn't breathe.

"Surprise," her foster father said. She scooted passed her foster mother and siblings, each of them giggling as she squeezed by, to press a kiss against his cheek and whispered thank you. She left a smudge of red lipstick behind and he reached up, wiping away her tears with a careful hand. When her foter father was done she promptly climbed over his legs and into Derek's lap, punching Stiles' in the shoulder as she did so. She curled up there like she was five and not eighteen, arms wrapping around his neck, skirt bunching around her knees as she curled her legs over the arm of the chair and pressed them into Stiles' lap. He grabbed her ankle with a grin, leaning back into the aisle and away from her clenched fist, lauhing under his breath. Cora pressed her face into Derek's shoulder and took a deep, aching breath.

"I regret letting you get me a phone," she lied to him.

Derek pressed a kiss to the top of her head, easy and natural as his arms came up around her shoulders. "Me too," he lied back.