Stiles Stilinski had been in love with you since the second grade.

Well, he didn’t know that’s what it was back then. All he knew was that when you shared your crayons with him after his broke, his face felt hot, and his stomach did this weird flip thing, like he’d swallowed a live fish. And when you held his hand during that one terrifying field trip to the nature center, he thought maybe he’d never wash that hand again.

But that was kid stuff, right? Puppy love, as his dad called it with a ruffle of Stiles’ hair and an amused smile.

Except, it wasn’t. Not really. Because here he was, years later, sitting on your bedroom floor, surrounded by old pizza boxes and half-finished homework, and that stupid fish-in-his-stomach feeling? Yeah, it had turned into a full-blown kraken.

You were flipping through an old photo album you’d found buried in your closet, laughing at the pictures of the two of you as kids. There was one of you both at eight, faces smeared with chocolate ice cream, grinning like you’d just conquered the world. Stiles stared at it a little too long, his heart squeezing in that all-too-familiar way.

He remembered being eight and thinking you were the coolest person in the entire universe. You weren’t afraid of anything—bugs, the dark, even bullies. And you always had this way of making him feel like he was brave too, just by being around you. Somewhere between bike rides and late-night movies, his silly little crush had sunk its claws in deeper, growing into something he didn’t have a name for back then.

Now? Now he knew exactly what it was.

And it was terrifying.