Helios flicks an ear at Scott and cranes his neck, sniffing. He does that cat-sniffing thing that curls back his top lip, eyes slightly narrowed, and watches Scott. Summer keeps her hands on him, feeling the faint tremble of his limbs ease away slowly when Scott speaks directly to him. Helios appreciates that kind of courtesy, though he’s still not at ease enough to actually relax.
“Is that what you call it?” Summer says to Stiles, grinning. “You didn’t seem to mind being fetched. As I recall, he suckered you in quite handily. Something about ‘I’m just going to sit here and pet your cat,’ wasn’t it?” She crouches a little, to look into Helios’ blue eyes, laughing. “And fetching you appears to have brought me Scott too.”
“Well, I mean, given the choice between figure out who his owner was and return him or let him get run over by a car, yeah, I picked the first one, I’m not that much of a jackass,” Stiles says, almost sounding a little wounded, his chin and jaw angling upwards as if he feels somehow he needs to defend his stance. “I have occasional days where I’m not a terrible person. But, yes, I tried to warn you, Scott and I have been a matched set since like preschool.”
Scott looks up from the paperwork he’s filling out with a shrug and a glance to the side, wordlessly sort of grudgingly agreeing with Stiles’ assessment of the situation with an attitude not unlike ‘what am I gonna do about it now?’
Before he can say anything else about it, though, Dr. Deaton enters the room. He perks an arch eyebrow to see both Scott and Stiles in the room with Summer and Helios, but he doesn’t say anything, really, only suggesting in a gentle voice, “Thanks for keeping them company, boys, but I think I can handle it from here.”
It isn’t a suggestion, but both of the teenaged boys take it well enough. Stiles wiggles his fingers in Summer’s direction. “Be in the waiting room, okay? Good luck.”
“And that’s why you’ve made /no/ effort to actually introduce us to each other,” Summer teases Stiles. “It’s as if you thought he wouldn’t like me!” It’s only as the words come out of her mouth that the potential truth of that hits her. Fortunately Dr Deaton comes in just then.
The little examination room is a little over-crowded with four people and an unhappy cat in it. She raises her own brows as both boys leave, eyes comically wide at Stiles’ parting shot, before she turns back to Dr Deaton. ”I can’t imagine why I would need good luck,” she says to him. “Are you secretly an alien from outer space?” It’s the weirdest thing she can come up with that’s not the truth — although come to think of it Stiles never said anything about the vet being special.
That’s how she’s decided to think of them all. Special.
Helios lays his ears back at the vet, apparently not having forgotten his impromptu visit a few weeks before. Summer tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and scratches the cat’s neck, trying to coax him to relax.