Chapter Text
Stiles had never expected to be anything other than normal, if even that at all. What is normal? What does that even mean?
Stiles can rattle off a cookie-cutter definition, easy. Or he can talk about Sunday evenings spent at the dinner table across from his dad, with something delicious and hand-cooked in front of him. He can talk nonstop about loyalty to friends and family, the drab exhaustion of an overworked mind seeped in anxiety, the frustratingly high frequency of awkward terror boners, or the bow of a smile that rises over his lips whenever he thinks about Scott; about his friends.
Normal is an amalgamation of things that make sense to him on a day-to-day basis, and a completely different sort of experience on a completely different day-to-day basis to every other individual in the world. Normal is not a shared experience, not perfectly. It is not a science.
It’s more of an art. Stiles enjoys art, sometimes, when it’s not just a smattering of paint in globs and glitches—an all too familiar kind of chaos he sees every time he closes his eyes at night and tries to find rest, and instead, finds his mind on fire.
Minimalistic pieces are nice, sometimes, he guesses. If he had to give an objective answer. Minimalism is nice. Colors are nice, too. They’re also generally normal, too, right?
Normal. A word with meaning akin to water, slipping right through his fingertips. Elusive in the long-term; a flickering understanding he accepts and loses track of in a passing moment.
Normal had never, ever seemed an applicable term to a life ridden with werewolves.
In fact, Stiles thinks as he hikes the strap of his backpack further over his shoulder, normal probably has no business being in the same room as him, considering how much weird shit he deals with on a daily basis. Werewolves. Kanimas. Werewolf hunters. Pack dynamics. Monsters of the day. That one time he had to take chemistry.
He could go on and on about all the ways he eludes the grasp of a normal life, unless he rearranges it, smashes it down and tears it up a bit with his human claws (fingers, nails) and comes out with something vaguely normal for him.
Like attending pack meetings for a pack he is not and will not ever officially be a part of; there’s rules upon rules in this new world he’s been living in for the past however many years. He’d know—he’s the research expert. That’s his thing.
Scott keeps things civil. Erica keeps things sassy. Kira is a constant reminder of the importance of kindness, and of diligence—in an adorably bubbly, badass kind of way. Isaac and Boyd provide awkward and dryly comical insulation, respectively. Deaton aids and abets. Derek rips out throats. Stiles researches.
Walking over a sodden log recently drenched as he makes his way towards the near-abandoned house just up ahead, Stiles takes a moment to sniff the air. He pulls a quizzical expression, nose scrunched and lips frowning, as if he can actually smell anything other than wet forest. The rain drips down through the canopy above him in small streams, soft as mist, all-encompassing. Fog is heavy enough around him that he can barely see where he’s going, and wow wouldn’t it be nice if he could, like, smell his way through it or something. Or even listen his way through. He’s a fantastic listener!
Alas, Stiles Stilinski is still undeniably human.
The house isn’t much further, though, and before he knows it he’s breaking through the fog and staring up at the dilapidated Hale house, still rising from the ashes, even after all this time. Stiles knows for a fact that the paneling on the inside is even more charred than the exterior, though it’s hard to imagine. The house itself was, once upon a time, massive and luxurious. A house built for a family big enough to fill it completely, a house nestled and lavished with comforts.
Stiles doesn’t like to think on it too much, if he can help it. It’s just too damn sad.
He glances up with one eye squinted, staring into the cloudy sky, gray as smoke. His face gets pelted with raindrops, now unhindered by treetops, but he’s unbothered. His backpack jangles as he jostles, and he hears Scott’s voice inside the house before he’s even got a foot on the first step of the veranda.
He heads through the front door to where his friends are waiting, feeling some indefinable sense of peaceful calm that reads an awful lot like familiarity—like normalcy—settle through his usually too-tight chest.
He smiles.
✧
“We have got to stop meeting here like this,” Stiles says, playing up the irony of the words as he turns over his shoulder and waits for Scott to get up from Derek’s battered couch. The thing has seen better days. “Honestly, why do we have to meet here? Like, okay, I know it has heavy werewolf-y meaning and all that, since it’s Derek’s family home, but he has that huge warehouse place now, right? Why are we not meeting in there with snacks and, I don’t know, having movie nights instead of this boring class discussion stuff?”
“Aw, come on, Stiles,” Scott needles, stretching. “Cut him some slack. He feels happy here.”
Stiles’s eyebrows shoot up, eyes wide. “Who feels happy? You think Derek Hale is happy here? Listen, I know you have werewolf super senses and all that but when was the last time you had your eyesight checked? I’m honestly concerned.”
Scott frowns at him, shouldering him aside a little as they walk through the doorway at the same time. Stiles doesn’t mind it, not even when it causes him to ram a little into the doorframe hard enough to knock the ball of his shoulder with enough force to bruise, but nothing bad enough to incite even a hiss of pain. He bruises easy, and he’s used to it. Scott has wide shoulders and an adorably clumsy nature.
“Maybe happy wasn’t the right word,” Scott admits, his smile small. “He’s, I don’t know, comfortable here. It’s his family home, and fire or not, it’s where he grew up. He has to have a lot of good memories from here too, man.”
“Whatever you say,” Stiles says. “I still don’t understand why we can’t have these meetings in the warehouse. It’s massive, it’s got a lot of open space, and hey! Plenty of room for discussions. We can even sit in a huge circle and hold hands and—”
“Do you ever,” a voice suddenly starts, directly behind them. “Shut up?”
Stiles jumps, though he pretends afterwards that he most certainly had not, and makes a face. Scott turns smoothly, his smile lifting a little in amusement as they glance up the patio stairs to where Derek is leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his muscular chest. Stiles resents that—his chest, for one, the fact that it’s not just a chest, really, but a muscular chest, for two, and also just because he can. That’s just how it is.
Derek scowls at them, which isn’t surprising or unsettling, not yet. Stiles is relatively unaffected—he’s seen quite a few Derek scowls in his life, and that’s not to say that he’s immune, but he’s definitely practiced in the art of not becoming terrified every time Derek turns to him with an expression like a fast-approaching grave.
Stiles gestures vaguely with his hands, bobs his head out a little. “Hey, the meeting is over, I can officially talk as much as I want. You’re lucky I stay relatively quiet during the meetings; otherwise I’d be like. Rebel without a cause, party of one. Instead, I’m more like Toeing The Line Man, Sometimes Rebellious, Usually In Line, party of one.”
Derek’s grimace is a thing of beauty. Literally, it’s a work of art and it’s also beautiful because, well, he’s beautiful and it’s really just not fair that he can make such a mopey expression look so good. Stiles guarantees that if he has ever scowled, it has not looked anything like that. He doesn’t even want to know what it looks like, actually.
Derek’s jaw clenches, and Stiles wonders for an incredulous moment if he is reading his thoughts.
“You call your participation in the meetings ‘relatively quiet?’”
Scott snorts and Stiles thinks, traitor.
“You don’t even know,” Scott laughs, reaching out to pull lightly at Stiles’s shoulder, leading him away from the house, a gentle insistence. Stiles goes with him, pliable because he knows Scott has to get back home for a tutoring session, and Stiles is so proud of his newly turned leaf that he doesn’t fight him. He does, however, glare over his shoulder and point at Derek with pinky and pointer finger, from his eyes and back.
Derek doesn’t even blink.
Once they’re far enough out of earshot that Stiles is fairly certain Derek won’t be able to hear them—he’s not entirely certain because Derek being an alpha basically means that all of his senses are on steroids and can do things even he can’t understand—he turns to Scott and sighs, as loud as he can.
“The almighty leader,” he begins, voice pitched high, “has been in fine fighting form lately. Like, more so than usual.”
Scott’s nodding his head, his muscled arms swinging faintly at his sides as they make it through the breach in trees and find Stiles’s jeep sitting there, as beautiful and untouched albeit slightly wetter than it had been when he’d left it.
“Yeah,” Scott agrees slowly, speculative. “He’s been a little on edge lately.”
“A little?” Stiles squeaks, shaking his head.
Scott smiles, amused. “Okay, a lot on edge. Like majorly on edge.”
Stiles, happily appeased, nods his head as he gets into the driver’s seat of his jeep. Scott crawls into the passenger seat beside him and slams the door a little harder than Stiles would’ve liked, but he only cringes, mostly lets it slide. Scott has been exhibiting strange spikes in his werewolf attributes, like spurts of strength that are even surprising to him, or depth of smell that’s almost on par with Derek’s. Stiles isn’t certain, but he has ideas about it.
Ideas along the lines of true alpha and also, maybe, the fact that Scott had seemed to get these spikes in werewolf strength right after submitting himself to Derek and officially becoming one of the pack. It was as though just by making a promise to Derek, accepting the rules and regulations that come with being a part of Pack Hale, he became physiologically happier. And as a sweet side dish: stronger. In several regards.
“What’s his deal?” Stiles wonders aloud as they pull out onto the main road, driving steadily but slowly in the questionable weather conditions. The sky has been a confusing toil of clouds and grumbles for a few days now, without any sign of relenting. Stiles can’t remember the last time he’d seen the sun clearly, though he definitely recalls the frequent piercing patches of blue intermittently spread throughout the cloud cover. Scott, glancing up into the canopy of gray, taps his fingers against the doorframe, surprisingly contemplative.
“He was fine tonight, but man, you should’ve seen him the other day.” Scott looks at him and shakes his head, as if whatever form Derek had been in had been bad enough to not need a verbal explanation at all. The look spoke volumes. “I think he’s stressed.”
“Alpha duties?”
“Maybe, but I don’t really think so?”
“He’s kinda just like that, though. Stressed. That’s sort of his thing, right?”
“Mm,” Scott hums, but there’s a stubborn line to his jaw that Stiles is familiar with, one that means he thinks there’s more to it than what they’ve got. Usually, Stiles would continue to hash it out with Scott, to joke and jibe together until they return home, but for once he keeps his mouth shut and turns the music up a bit, letting the rumbling of his jeep drown out in something electronic and awful. His favorite.
Scott keeps to himself the entire ride back to his place, but when he steps from the jeep he turns and looks back through the rolled-down window, studying Stiles’s face intently. At first Stiles doesn’t really notice how weird it is and kind of just stares back at him, eyes heavy and face bored. But then a minute passes and he realizes he should be weirded out, so he’s weirded out, and his lips open to ask Scott if there’s something on his face, probably frosting from the cupcakes he’d made and brought to the meeting, when Scott shakes his head and smiles, that strange expression slipping away.
“See you tomorrow?” he asks, and Stiles nods.
“You know it!”
He watches Scott jog up to his house as he absentmindedly rubs his arm over his lips, just in case there is something there. Scott clears seven paved steps in a single leap without a single line of strain in his body and turns to wave, giving Stiles the okay to head home.
Before he pulls back onto the road, he pops his visor down and looks at himself in the little mirror there, touching his high cheekbones, his pert nose, the bow of his lips. There’s nothing on his face but his face, and that could honestly be reason enough to stare in bewilderment. Surprising, coming from Scott, but Stiles wouldn’t be surprised.
Story of his life.
✧
Things have been relatively calm for a relatively decent amount of time, especially in Beacon Hills, which means that it’s definitely about time for something to go terribly wrong.
It happens when Stiles is in the middle of a calculus exam; comes in the form of his phone vibrating in his pocket, making his entire leg shake. When he checks it and finds a startling message from Scott, he’s up and out of class before his teacher can even get his name from her mouth.
The foreboding text message is only the beginning of annoying things that start to happen. First, there’s the mention of a pair of kids in the forest near an area Scott had said there maybe-possibly-definitely was an unknown creature lurking around; one that, according to Isaac, smells appalling enough to be anything but good news. And who is Stiles to judge Isaac’s danger scenting abilities? Okay usually he would totally judge, because Isaac is the most puppy of all the wolves and Stiles, being one step below him on the totem pole as the only resident human of a werewolf pack that they know of, likes to give him a hard time.
But then he gets clarification from Boyd, and he trusts him with his life and his favorite hoodie, even if he is only slightly less pack pup than Isaac. Erica’s sarcastic message is only another impending omen. But then comes the final nail in the coffin: Derek says the scent is new and strange and dangerous, and Stiles believes him in a heartbeat. Dude’s a wolf, through and through.
Next, there’s the frantic phone call Stiles gets from Scott as he’s speeding down the highway heading towards the coordinates that Scott sent him, with the overall daunting message: we lost it.
After pulling to the side of the road only to curse and debate whether or not he should keep going towards the coordinates and meet up with the pack, or turn back and find some place with wifi so he could maybe research the damn thing based off of Derek’s descriptors, his decision is made for him in the form of a young kid’s scream.
It’d been just close enough that Stiles could pinpoint the kid’s location, and it had been a no-brainer what he needed to do.
This is exactly how Stiles finds himself covered in blood, sweat, and dirt, running through the forest with an unconscious preteen in his wiry arms and a screeching roar close enough behind him to be his shadow. He has no idea where the other kid is—Scott had said kids—but he doesn’t have the time or the luxury to stop and look around, not with that thing intent on feasting upon his flesh and bones.
He runs as fast as he can, cursing under his panting breath as the kid flops around lifelessly in his arms. There’s a gash on the boy’s arm, and a cut on his forehead that’s been bleeding nonstop onto Stiles for far too long to be anything but a source of bone-deep apprehension. It doesn’t look life threatening, but it definitely doesn’t look good.
“Oh, God,” he chokes, stumbling over an upturned root and only managing to save himself from falling down with sheer force of will. The rain has been off and on and is thankfully currently off, but what with it having recently been on, everything under Stiles’s already clumsy feet is slippery as ice. He’s almost gone down several times, just barely managing to keep the boy from being crushed between his chest and the ground, but he isn’t sure how much longer he can do this. The boy is heavy for a kid, or maybe Stiles is just weak, which, he wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case, but he favors the former line of reasoning. For obvious reasons. “Where the hell is everybody?”
The words don’t even make it completely from his mouth when he’s barreled into from behind, the force powerful enough to knock him clear off his feet. He tries to cradle the boy to his chest, to turn as much as he can to protect him from the fall and his body. It’s difficult and he doesn’t fully succeed, only manages to turn enough to land on his hip and ass with the boy flying from his grasp. He feels the impact quake through his entire skeleton, pain centering on the crest of his hip, but he pushes through it with a cry until his body is protectively shielding that of the young boy’s.
He’d failed to protect the boy from crashing to the ground, but he doesn’t feel altogether too horrible about that simply because if he hadn’t—if he hadn’t, then the boy would’ve been the first thing that monster found. This way is better, no matter how one looks at it.
Because this way? This way the boy is hidden under his body, pressed heavily into the muddy ground beneath them, but with Stiles as a solid, steadfast wall between him and the shrieking creature. Stiles glances up at it, his heart in his throat, hammering out an emergency rhythm, silently calling to anyone who might hear it. His hands shake, but he stares resolutely at the creature and ignores the stinging pain in his hip, the sudden sharp burn along his left shin. He smells the tang of blood and the putrid stench of the creature, something humanoid but rotting and covered in worms, and gags. Its teeth are brown and sharp and getting closer and closer as it gets back onto it’s feet and prepares to lunge at him.
The thing is easily, easily the most disgusting creature that Stiles has ever seen, and he’s seen a lot of gross shit. If it isn’t the decomposed skin or the rotten teeth, it’s the pulsing eyes and the rancid smell, and the worms. God, the worms.
Stiles feels lightheaded. His vision is swimming and his arms and shoulders ache from carrying the kid, from running with the kid, and he swears there isn’t a part of him that isn’t hurting. He’d only tripped a few times, only gone down once, but it’d been enough to slice open his shin, surely the cause of the burning sensation. His lungs ache, his chest tight, his brain a constant disjointed stream of frightened screams as the creature finally gets its bearings back and turns those creepy eyes back on him, too-wide lips lifting at the corners in a triumphant grin.
“Laugh it up, wormhead!” he shouts, or at least he thinks he does, everything’s sort of swirling now. He wonders if he’s having an anxiety attack, wonders if that’s the reason he can’t breathe, can’t think; this is quite possibly the absolute worst timing he’s ever experienced. “Worms. What the fuck.”
The creature inhales—and how frustrating, that Stiles is about to be eaten by a creature he hasn’t even had the time to research; doesn’t even know the name of, what an embarrassing mark on his résumé—and gets slammed into by something massive and furry and—
“Oh thank God,” Stiles cries, voice shaking as he lifts heavy eyelids, watching Derek tear into the creature with claws like razorblades. He’s vicious and swift, wolfed out and roaring. The creature is only surprised for a moment, reassesses the situation far too quickly, and then its attacking Derek with a kind of sheer desperation that sickens Stiles. It leaps until Derek’s pressed under the weight of it, and moves with enhanced speed to snap its jaws inches away from his face. He wraps his clawed hands around the throat of it, baring his teeth aggressively, right back in its face. A moment later and Isaac, Boyd, and Scott break through the trees, all of them wolfed out, all of them roaring for blood.
They’re a beautiful wave of color against the drab backdrop of gray sky and earthy-hued forest; blurs of hoodie red, jean blue, and in Isaac’s case, bright orange t-shirt. Stiles could kiss them.
For a flickering moment, he wonders where Erica is, and if she’s okay, before he’s distracted again with watching as Scott knocks the creature off of Derek and slams his shoulder into the gut of it, until he rolls over it, and then rolls free. He turns and heads straight for Stiles and the boy, then, not even looking back to make sure he isn’t attacked in retaliation—he trusts Derek, trusts his pack too much to doubt them.
And he’s right about that—they all cut it off as it lunges for him, crashing it backwards and into the mud, claws tearing as Derek’s voice, guttural and deep, shouts out.
“Do not let it bite you! Not even once!”
Stiles doesn’t have the energy to think about what that could possibly mean. He hopes that Derek is just being extra careful and protective, and a part of him sincerely believes that could definitely be the reason. The other part of him is suspicious without a concrete reason to be; he ignores that part of him in lieu of looking up at Scott’s swift approach. He lands by Stiles’s side and kneels, searching first his face, and then his body, looking for wounds. It’s pretty obvious where they are, and that they need attention, but Stiles gestures to the boy in his shadow and grunts, “He needs a medic, Scott. Bad.”
Scott’s already nodding, but he says, “So do you.”
Before Stiles can protest, there’s a high shriek of pain, one that sounds too wolfy to be the creature, and it makes Scott tense. Stiles’s heart clenches in his chest, concern lacing through him like a drug. Scott shakes his head, though, knowing Stiles well enough to predict the coming protests.
Scott shoulders himself under Stiles until he has him perched around the back of his neck, a fireman’s hold. Alternatively: a fashionable human scarf.
Scott says, “Hold on to my neck, Stiles. Can you do that? Don’t let go.”
Stiles doesn’t mention how tired he is, or how his arms feel like spaghetti noodles. He just holds on and tries to keep holding on, as the crashing sounds of fighting and roaring fade, moving further away, until all that’s left is the echo of violence through the trees. Scott carefully kneels, lifting the boy into his arms, trusting Stiles on his shoulders, a brave and possibly foolish thing to do.
Stiles really doesn’t want to plummet to the ground, though, so he reaches deep inside himself for the last vestiges of his strength and actually manages to hold on while Scott hurries back towards the road, where Stiles’s jeep is still parked. They make it in record time, though the jostling of Scott’s movements have thoroughly upset every wound Stiles has. He watches the trees pass by in bumpy irregular patterns, bark every shade of ruddy brown and moistened gray. There’s no sign of wildlife around them, not visibly, but even Stiles can hear the shrill calls of ravens overhead, and the continuous chiming of insects in the undergrowth. Focusing on the passing scenery helps him forget his wounds and how painful they are, but he can’t manage to forget that if he’s feeling like he’s been run over by a truck, then the boy has to be feeling ten times worse, at least.
When they breach the tree line Scott’s and Stiles’s eyes both land on the jeep, parked haphazardly on the side of the road, tail end still partway in the street, emergency lights flashing. Stiles doesn’t even remember turning them on.
Scott crouches low and helps him down, positioning him by the front tire so that he’s supported in an upright position, and then he sets the boy down so that his head is in Stiles’s lap. With one hand, Scott reaches out and takes the pain away from the boy, his veins turning black, the purest form of magic Stiles has ever seen. With the other, he pulls out his phone and calls Deaton, eyes staring unblinkingly into the forest.
Stiles wonders if he can hear the fight, if he’s monitoring it from this distance, worried. He probably is; Stiles would be.
The phone call is short and clipped, especially for Scott, and that tells Stiles one of two things: that either Scott has recently gotten into a disagreement with Deaton, which is incredibly unlikely, or he is more than just a little worried but rather outright anxious about the pack members he had left behind in order to secure Stiles and the boy’s safety far from the creature.
Stiles knows anxiety. He knows what it feels like to have it licking up every vein in your body, torching you from the inside out, the worst kind of unappeasable burn. He knows how it takes, and takes, and takes, and never gives anything back but pain and descent, so the moment Scott hangs up the phone and turns immediately back to the forest, Stiles tells him to go.
“Can’t,” Scott snaps, then turns to Stiles, jaw loose and mouth slack, immediately apologetic. “Sorry, man, but I can’t.”
He doesn’t even have to explain it. Stiles knows, without having to ask, that this had been an order cast down from an alpha; not Derek asking Scott to do this one thing, but alpha Derek Hale, commanding his beta to protect these two lives regardless of the circumstances.
Stiles doesn’t know if he should be more touched or frustrated. Maybe if it had been anyone else but Scott—but no, that’s not true either. Anxiety is a curse, a sickness he doesn’t wish on any of his friends, regardless of whether or not he likes them anywhere near as much as he likes Scott. With this in mind, he decides that he’s leaning towards the latter, towards frustration, and he’s going to have words with a certain alpha when they all survive this mess.
Stiles does not have the ability to take away any of Scott’s pain, or anxiousness. So he does what he can, with what he has: he shares the brunt of it without knowing what’s going on miles through those trees, hoping that it’s not as bad as Scott’s tensed shoulders and fisted hands seem to implicate that it is.
The clouds shift enough for sunlight to peer through and cast the closest trees in gold; at the same time, Scott, who hasn’t moved an inch since they’d made it to the jeep, allows his shoulders to finally, abruptly wilt under a heavy sigh. He blinks a few times, ascertaining something Stiles has no way of knowing, and turns to him with a tight smile.
“The fighting’s over.” He tilts his head, confused. Then: “Shit.”
“It went well, then,” Stiles says sarcastically, nodding his head. “Fuck.”
“It got away. I don’t know how, but I don’t hear it anymore. Derek and the others are heading over now. Deaton should be here any moment.”
“Good. Great. Listen,” Stiles sighs, eyes closing as he deflates against his tire. “If it comes back? Punch it in the face. Just, right in the face. For me.”
“Sure thing.” Scott replies, with far more steel and much too little amusement for Stiles to let his guard down. He glances at his friend from the corner of his eyes, lifts a hand to grasp his bleeding bicep. He watches the bead of sweat drip down Scott’s sideburn, knows it isn’t a raindrop, and bites at his lip in worry. He’s not good with this kind of situation, tensed silences, so he does what he always does: he fills the space.
“Worms.” Stiles grunts, shaking his head. He flicks his gaze over the trees, wondering which section the rest of the pack will emerge from. There’s a raven sitting on a low-hanging branch a ways away from them, eerily quiet. Watchful. Stiles glares at it. “I can’t fuckin’ believe it.”
“Definitely the grossest thing I’ve ever seen,” Isaac says, as he breaches the tree line and heads straight for the young boy. He falls to his knees and presses his fingertips to the laceration on the boy’s forehead, and the bruise forming on his forearm; the veins of his arms turn black. Tears form in his eyes but don’t fall; he clenches his jaw so tight it’s a wonder his teeth don’t shatter. His every touch is so gentle, so careful, so controlled—as if he’s afraid that he might hurt the boy just by being near him—that Stiles has to look away.
He knows Isaac’s story. He knows and maybe he won’t ever understand, not the way Isaac does, but he knows enough. Isaac usually avoids children at all costs, fearful of what he’s capable of—he’d once said that he has monster blood in his veins, rooted so deep he can never upend them. He’d been in the corner of some party at the time, and Stiles had come over, albeit a little warily—they aren’t the closest of friends, after all—and something in Isaac had broken free that night, loosening his lips, hitching him open enough to let slip a single, sad misconception that speaks volumes of how he views himself.
Isaac, well. There’s a lot of vulnerability in him, an endless, depthless ocean of trauma he’s constantly drowning in. If he doesn’t feel comfortable around kids, at least not yet, fearful of his nature, then who is Stiles to judge him? The fact that Isaac had approached this boy without a single hint of hesitation in him, knowing that the boy is injured and hurting, knowing that he could lessen the pain? It showed a depth of vulnerability in him that wasn’t for anyone else to see. Even if Stiles has a clearer idea of Isaac, because of that strange night.
It’s just not his place to look.
When he glances away, his eyes find Derek coming through the tree line, supporting Boyd as he stumbles on his one good leg beside him. Derek doesn’t seem bothered by the added weight, not even while holding up someone as big as Boyd. He doesn’t even seem to notice that he’s bleeding in several places, that there’s a gash along the line of his cheekbone that’s dripping onto his neckline. He just seems pissed. Stiles understands, sympathizes, relates. All of that and a bag of chips.
“What the hell is it?” Scott demands, glancing over his shoulder as headlights appear down the road, before pulling in beside them. Deaton gets out of the driver’s seat already holding a hefty duffle bag, frowning at the sight of them.
Derek snarls, “A rugaru.”
“A ruga-what?” Scott asks, at the same time that Stiles whispers, “Fuck.”
“A rugaru,” Deaton says, tone calm even as he kneels beside Scott and Isaac and rummages through his bag to get the necessary materials. “Is a creature that was born human, but has some kind of genetic mutation that causes it to transform into what you surely just witnessed.”
“They’re cannibals,” Stiles adds, throwing an arm over his eyes. “Literally this is our lives. A rugaru. Out of all the fucked up monster things out there.”
Deaton nods, sympathetic in an expressionless, apathetic sort of way. Derek’s scowl is heavy enough it’s liable to fall to the ground. Isaac and Scott are still taking the pain from the boy, but he’s starting to come back to himself and the gash on his arm isn’t pretty. There are tears in his eyes before he’s even fully conscious, and then when he realizes that he’s surrounded by strangers, a few of which having black veins, he inhales a breath that’s undeniably reserved for a scream.
Stiles’s heart squeezes up, eyes flickering to Isaac’s face, suddenly pale and stricken, but then Scott, beautiful, tenderhearted and trustworthy Scott, brushes some of the boy’s hair away from his face and quietly shushes him.
“It’s okay,” he says, tone soothing, like he’s talking to a small animal. “You’re gonna be okay. We’re here to help you, okay? This is Deaton, he’s a doctor. Well…”
“A veterinarian, actually,” Deaton corrects, showing the boy a small smile. “I usually take care of animals. You’re a special case.”
“Yeah,” Scott says, “and this is Isaac, and Derek, and Stiles. Stiles is the one who saved your life.”
Stiles removes his arm from over his eyes and shakes his head, smiling at the young boy, whose eyes seem too large for his face. They’re big and green and they look so much like Derek’s it’s uncanny. The difference between them is that the boy’s hair, and the eyelashes surrounding those eyes, are the color of dust.
“Not really,” he says, shrugging his sore shoulders. “I just ran us through the woods and fell down a lot.”
Scott frowns, preparing to say something contrary, when Derek, of all people, interjects.
“If you hadn’t been there, this kid would be dead. He’d be dead, Stiles.”
“Oh my God,” Stiles snaps, frowning up at him. “Don’t say that in front of him!”
“Smooth,” Boyd laughs, low and quiet and barely audible from under Derek’s arm. Derek frowns down at him, disapproving, and in that space of time where Stiles isn’t pinned under Derek’s intense stare he lets himself hear those words again. Derek Hale, praising him, his words a living warmth moving through Stiles’s chest. They’re almost a compliment, really, and coming from Derek? Stiles wonders if he’s actually not dead after all.
“My brother,” the boy suddenly says, sounding like the words are being choked out of a too-tight throat. “My little brother was with me. Where is he? Is he okay? Is he alive?”
He’s frantic, his eyes wide and flickering, and Boyd is the first to soothe him.
He says, “We found him, he’s okay. He’s alive. He’s with my friend Erica; she’s keeping him safe.”
The boy looks into Boyd’s eyes with speculation, with suspicion, enough to make Stiles wonder what kind of past this kid has, what kind of lifestyle has led to such a steely gaze, unwavering and unafraid.
“I want to talk to him. I want to see him.”
“He’s at the hospital,” Scott’s voice is soft as a breath. Soothing. “He’s okay, but he needs a few stitches on his shoulder. We’ll take you to see him as soon as possible, okay?”
The boy glances between them, eyes lingering on Derek but not in the terrified, distrustful way that Stiles might expect for him to react with. Derek’s covered in blood and wounds and he’s standing there with his arms crossed over his beefy chest, scowl perfectly in place. But the kid holds his glare and doesn’t flinch, almost seems to trust him despite not having heard a word from him.
He glances over Boyd and Scott, and there’s that distrust, so surprising when aimed at the two of them, and Stiles has to wonder again at the life the boy had lived up to this moment. Was there some part of him, ingrained deep and true, that could see honest people clearly without having ever heard a word from them? Was that why he seemed to trust Derek already? Because he could tell with a glance and minimal study that Derek is not the kind of person to lie?
Before Stiles can wonder over that any more, the boy suddenly glances up at Stiles, abrupt enough to expose Stiles’s wide-eyed expression of surprise.
“Stiles?” he asks, his name coming out slow and careful, like the boy doesn’t want to mess it up in any way. Stiles wants to glance at Scott, at Boyd, to get some answers through their expressions because he doesn’t know a damn thing about the kid’s brother; he’d been so worried about the pack that he’d forgotten another kid was even in play. But the boy stares at him, wide-eyed and trusting, twin pools of endless green that make his heart clench tightly in his chest.
He feels himself nodding, moving a hand up to clear some of the stray hairs away from the boy’s face, almost tenderly. The gesture feels awkward to him; he’s not used to being around kids. But the boy doesn’t seem to feel it, or mind, he just continues staring up at Stiles with those too-wide eyes and that same trusting face that makes Stiles’s chest feel tight.
It’s too easy, then, to want and need to soothe this young kid’s worries. Stiles admires his grit, and his calm in this situation, even if he had been prepping to scream just a few minutes ago. The kid is strong.
“Don’t worry, little guy.” He says, smiling down at him. “We’ll get you to your brother.”
The boy listens to the words, lets them sink in good and deep, and then he smiles. His crooked teeth are precious, Stiles thinks, and what a weird thought to have in the middle of the forest surrounded by werewolves and covered in blood, with a monster on the loose and a kid by his side. Derek moves for the first time in a long time, stepping closer to peer at the kid with something like curiosity. His nostrils flare, not in the angry way, but in the scenting things kind of way.
Stiles is so not going to examine how he knows the difference between Derek’s nostril flares. Instead, his mind jumps back to Derek’s last words to him. He can’t keep thinking about them, or the fact that Derek was the one to say them, or the fact that he’s now feeling warm enough that he might be blushing, because he’s going to embarrass himself. He’s known for years that he’s attracted to Derek Hale; who wouldn’t be? Every inch of him is sculpted and tapered and lithe; and his eyes, mystic green pools of expression, the most beautiful things Stiles has ever seen in his life.
Even with all that, Stiles can admit if only to himself that he also sort of admires Derek. The guy has been through so much tragedy, had so much trauma ingrained into his character, and yet even with all of that thrown into the mix, he comes out this strong, loyal leader that they all needed. Even when he’d been all alone, his entire family taken from him forever, when all he’d had was himself and his memories—most of them tragic—he’d still been strong.
And then, later, when they had needed him—when Scott had needed him, and then Isaac, and Erica, and Boyd, well. He hadn’t left them out in the cold like he could have. Instead, he’d housed them, taught them, nurtured them as pack mates in the only ways that he knew how. And if Stiles is being completely honest, there are a lot of things that Derek has done wrong, but the way that he sticks by his friends, through thick and thin, even after some of them have left him behind? There’s something there to be admired. Something powerful and beautiful and worth loving.
Not that Stiles is in love with him. Of course not, because that wouldn’t just be so typical Stiles, would it? He’d moved from Lydia, the most unattainable beautiful goddess he’d ever seen, only to land his heart on someone even more unattainable, and gorgeous, and this time with a few twists: like frequent aggression, silence, and a past filled so completely with pain that trying to do anything with Derek always becomes a series of complicated steps towards any kind of goal. Also: being a werewolf. An alpha werewolf.
Typical Stiles.
And it’s not like the whole (alpha) werewolf bit is really the final nail in the coffin, either, right? Because of course it’s not. Derek is unattainable in the same way that a person might try to bottle the sun; too hot to handle. Also too big, probably. Stiles doesn’t mean for that to turn into a dirty thought but whenever he thinks about Derek and all of those muscles and the chiseled line of his abs and the way his back flexes when he lifts things—well. He gets a little distracted.
But okay, in his defense, it’s a really stellar distraction. Derek Hale is a lot to look at and he’s a lot to handle, too, but he’s also the only person in the world that seems to understand Stiles’s need for commitment. Not commitment in the relationship sense, though that would be incredibly nice and he would so not turn away from that!
He means it in terms of presence, in terms of bonds. Stiles needs Scott, and he needs his dad; it isn’t a desire or an exaggeration. Without them, he’d be lost. He cannot lose them.
Derek is intimately familiar with loss.
And maybe that’s what draws Stiles to him, somehow; that Derek is a survivor. Maybe that’s where the admiration begins, where it had room to grow and bloom and foster something bigger and stronger than mere admiration. Where it grew out of it’s pen and curled around the rungs of Stiles’s ribcage, pressed against his heart like butterfly wings, hesitant and flickering.
Love snuck up on Stiles and left him no room to put up any safeguards.
Might as well call him like you see him: the perpetually unrequited lover.
Because there is no way, no way in hell, that someone like Derek Hale would ever fall in love with someone like Stiles Stilinski. He’s too—everything. He’s too much of everything he shouldn’t be and too little of what he needs to be. His mind is a constant pit of chaos and his heart latches on too quick and too tight and he can’t help it, he loves what and whom he loves and he never stops.
Maybe that’s how he knew that what he felt for Lydia wasn’t love, because it stopped. He admires her, too, thinks she’s brilliant and still the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen and ever will see. But he’s okay with the distance between them, with her friendship and nothing more. He doesn’t remember when that had happened, but he’s certain if he pinpointed it, it’d be somewhere around the time Derek stomped grumpily into his life.
So it’s a one-sided thing, whatever. He can deal with this; in fact, it’s like he was born to deal with this. He’s got training! He knows how this goes and he can deal with it.
It just sucks, right, that it has to be someone who’s literally always going to be in his life? Because he and Scott are a package deal, no question there. But Scott and his pack are also a package deal of sorts, and that includes Derek, so he’s definitely going to always be there. Stiles isn’t quite sure if he’s happier about that than he is distraught, but he’s fairly certain it’s the former, if only because he’s a fool in love. But it’s also his werewolf-proximity senses that tell him so, and those are trustworthy. And also totally real.
“Okay,” Deaton says, catching Stiles’s attention from the endless whirling of his own thoughts. He zips up his bag and stands, every movement careful, even when he’s rushing. “He needs to be taken to the hospital now. I’ve taken care of the worst of it, but he has the beginnings of a fever.”
“I’ll take him,” Isaac volunteers, hands already sliding underneath the boy’s body. When the boy hesitates to accept him, Isaac makes a small noise, encouraging and safe even while it’s hesitant and afraid—Stiles closes his eyes, his heart hurting for the guy—and the boy is his. He wraps his arms around his neck and Isaac holds him protectively against his chest, his arms solid as steel, hands soft as a breath.
Deaton nods his head, accepting this with a hurried gesture back to his car. Isaac follows after him at a trot, and then those headlights are drifting over them and away, racing towards the hospital. Scott heaves a hefty sigh and turns to Boyd, frowning in sympathy.
“Sucks, man, though it definitely sounded worse than it looks now. What happened?”
“That was probably Derek’s injuries you heard,” Boyd says, glancing up at the man in question. “It wanted to rip chunks right out of him. Might’ve succeeded a little.”
The latter is posed as a question, which tells Stiles that Boyd might’ve been unconscious for a little bit. Why else would he not remember how Derek had gotten some of his injuries, if he had been there with him the entire time? Stiles glares up at Derek, pissed off and still zinging a bit from the adrenaline in his system. Derek merely scowls at them, displeased with the shift of focus, and shrugs his heavy shoulders, both of which are either covered in someone’s blood or are still bleeding as they speak.
“I’ll live.” He grunts. “It sounded worse than it was.”
“It sounded like slaughter.” Scott clarifies, his voice a rare whip of contempt. Stiles raises his brows at him, proud and impressed. But then a moment later he’s taking in those words and he’s pissed again, glaring at Derek and daring him, daring him to look in his direction so that Stiles can give him an explosive round of verbal reprimands. He is so rash! Foolishly rash! Hypocritical, too, what with his constant needling about not doing stupid things. Clearly he needs to have a taste of his own medicine.
“Well, it wasn’t.” Derek’s voice becomes gruff, coming from low in his throat. The meaning of it is clear: drop the subject. Scott obeys, if only because Boyd is shifting a little, his injured leg bothering him. Scott gestures at it with his chin, asks, “How’d that happen then?”
Silence. Of the unexpected and curious variety. Boyd seems to be looking for the right words to say, carefully picking and choosing through several, when Derek interjects.
“My fault.” He says, and there’s not an inch of him that isn’t drenched in guilt. The lines of his face carve deep in disapproval, his anger and his sadness, as always, directed inwards. Boyd shakes his head, a halfhearted thing.
“It’s not that bad,” he promises, voice steady. “Doesn’t even hurt much.”
“Liar,” Scott huffs, but he’s smiling in a way that’s for Boyd’s benefit but is definitely aimed at Derek; it’s not a real smile, not nearly. It’s hiding—very poorly, Stiles might add—the gut-wrenching concern running through Scott’s veins.
It’s still a little strange how well Scott and Derek get along, now, what with Scott refusing to become a part of his pack for ages and being resentful and all. Rightfully so, too, but all the same. Stiles supposes that for the most part, Scott is just generally unable to not empathize with people who are hurting, who are broken and fragile and screaming on the inside. Stiles feels that too, deeply; it’s always been a sort of issue between his father and he, and it brings back memories of his mother. Of hospital visits and Stiles’s insistence on taking care of his mom above himself, regardless of what his father said.
He’d never admit it, wouldn’t dare, but Derek is definitely broken.
Stiles watches the ways his eyes shift, gleam, then narrow. Pools of green flickering in the moonlight, dancing swirls of surly emotions dragging his eyebrows down low. His jaw ticks and his free hand fists at his side.
“I got—distracted,” Derek explains, voice low. He glances at Stiles, suddenly, an almost unconscious thing that makes Stiles sit up a little straighter. He shoots a questioning glance at Scott, wondering if he’d seen it, but Scott doesn’t take his eyes off of Derek. He’s frowning, though, in the same way that he’d been frowning at Stiles through the window of his jeep the last time he’d dropped him off at his house.
The silence builds and keeps growing until Stiles is certain that none of them are going to break it. Except for him, of course, because yeah they are definitely still out in the open, vulnerable to attack, and every one of them is bleeding somewhere. So, definitely not the best time to just stand (in Stiles’s case, sit) and stare at each other, though Stiles wouldn’t mind taking a rain check on that, either. The pack scores pretty high on the attractiveness scale, and he’s definitely not unwilling to reap the benefits.
“Guys? Monster on the loose? Boyd accepts your apology, Derek, so can we maybe not hang around in the area the thing might still be lurking in? Just a thought.”
This time, Derek actually rolls his eyes at Stiles. Scott sniffs the air, completely unironically, though it still makes Stiles want to laugh.
“It’s not near us,” Scott asserts, confident. He turns back to Stiles and hitches his arm around his shoulders, helping lift him to his feet. They all seem to turn to the jeep at once, eyes expectant, and Stiles groans.
“Blood and guts and mud. Everywhere. Gonna get all over my baby.”
But he doesn’t protest. He knows they’re all a bit worse for the wear, that they need rest and in Stiles’s case, some homemade medical care. He’s not so debilitated that he can’t safely drive the jeep, though, so he snatches the keys away from Scott before he can get any ideas.
Scott frowns, but relents.
Once everyone’s hands and feet are inside the vehicle, Stiles turns it around and they head home, tired and hurt and quiet, with only Stiles’s terrible taste in music to keep them company.
✧
“Something’s changing.”
Stiles glances up from his bed and the tome sitting heavily in his lap, raising a curious brow at Scott walking through his bedroom door. It’s not surprising that he’s here so suddenly without warning, Stiles is definitely used to that. What is surprising is the level of contemplation on Scott’s normally goofy face.
“I—what? Say again?”
Scott gestures vaguely, aggressively, like he’s trying to get his point across in this one jerky gesture. “Something’s changing, dude. I can feel it but I can’t explain it.”
“That helps me absolutely not at all, just so you know.”
“It’s like, okay.” Scott pushes his fingers through his hair, and paces across Stiles’s room. “It started with Derek.”
“Doesn’t everything,” Stiles huffs, rolling his eyes. He completely ignores the way his chest suddenly feels tight, the way his throat closes up and he has to swallow to release the pressure of it.
“I noticed it a really frickin’ long time ago but I never said anything because, well, we’re a new pack, right? We’re new and we don’t know what we’re doing, and I assumed that Derek kind of knew what he was doing but still wasn’t sure, ya know? We were all kinda just hoping for the best. So there was a lot of stuff I didn’t question, even though it felt weird.”
Stiles sighs, dog-earing the current page he’s on in the tome he’s reading, an amalgamation of monster types and descriptions, something ancient and not entirely in English. He recognizes a Confusing Scott Monologue when he hears one; it’s been quite a while since the last one, which had come when Kira had entered town and Scott had been trying to assimilate his past feelings for Allison, beautiful lovely badass Allison, and his new feelings for beautiful lovely kickass Kira.
“Derek is a good alpha,” Scott says, rubbing absentmindedly at his jaw. “He’s very attentive, especially in fights, like seriously over-attentive in fights. You know he has that suicidal hero thing going on where he always goes at the thing alone.”
“Yeah,” Stiles agrees, scowling. “I’m familiar with the trait.”
Scott flinches, flicks an apologetic glance at Stiles and says, “My bad.”
“But yeah,” Stiles continues on, shrugging his shoulders, pleased that he’d gotten his point across to Scott. “All things considered, Derek’s a pretty good leader. He knows how to keep his cool when it counts. He’s fuckin’ terrifying, so there’s that. Good at nesting.”
“Stiles, be serious.”
“Am I wrong?”
Scott ignores him. “So how did he get distracted last night? Distracted enough to let Boyd get hurt like that? It doesn’t make sense. We rarely get seriously hurt because he’s always there, jumping in the way, always taking the brunt of everything for himself. It doesn’t make sense!”
Stiles frowns. “Dude, it happens. Shit happens. Not even Derek can be where he needs to be—or wants to be, I guess, though who would want to be the person who’s always getting sliced and diced in battle, I’m just saying.”
“That’s the thing though,” Scott points at him, like he’s made a great point worthy of being literally pointed at. “He could’ve been there—he could’ve been where he needed to be or whatever, he was close enough to do it. He just…got distracted. Something caught his attention, in the middle of a fight for our lives, and was more important than Derek’s life, and even Boyd’s and Isaac’s. Do you get that, Stiles? Something more important than his pack.”
Stiles is frowning, now, concern riding him hard enough to tense his shoulders and neck, straining them. He sets his tome aside and stands, arms crossed over his chest and eyes narrowed, staring into space. His mind works a mile a minute, trying to come up with the answer, with any answer, because Scott is right, that is incredibly strange and out of character and strange.
What might have more pull than Derek Hale’s own pack? His family, his true pack; but they’re all dead, every last one of them, gone. There is not a single thing that Stiles can think of that ranks higher than Derek’s pack, his new pack, the one he’d made himself. Not a single thing.
And Scott is so, so right and Stiles had been so, so blind. Something is changing, now, and neither of them can put their finger on it.
“Oh, shit.” Stiles swallows, hard. Scott nods his head, excited like a puppy now that Stiles is fully on his side in this.
“Right?”
“I mean, I don’t think anything is more important to Derek than his pack. Maybe it was something surprising?”
“Enough to cause him to endanger us? Not likely.”
“Dude, I don’t know. I’m thoroughly freaked out, though, so thanks for that.” Scott shrugs his shoulders, a careless movement as if to say I’m right here with you, buddy, totally lost.
“Maybe it was natural like, an unconscious reaction to something. I stand by him putting his pack before anything else. Anything,” he emphasizes when Scott opens his mouth to propose some sort of devil’s advocate argument. “So maybe he couldn’t control it? I have no idea what it could’ve been, Scott, but maybe he didn’t have control in that moment. Distracted in every sense of the word.”
Scott thinks about this, really thinks about it, and then he’s shaking his head. “It’s convoluted, but that has to be it. There’s no other way I can understand it.”
Stiles points at him and says, “Excellent use of vocab, Scott.”
Scott beams, smile bright as a sunrise. “Thanks.”
“Are things weird with Boyd and Isaac? With Erica?” Stiles asks, getting right back to business, the cogs in his mind turning. “Are they acting out of character too?”
Scott’s frowning again, but it’s less frustrated and more pensive. Still incredibly strange to see on Scott’s face, of all people, but Stiles is too sidetracked to feel the amusement of it.
“I don’t think so?” he says, voice rising in pitch. “Dude, no. The only changes have been like, the way we all respond to Derek. Like Boyd is usually standoffish, right? But lately whenever Derek’s with us he’s, I don’t know, a little closer. He comes out of the shadows more, is what I’m trying to say.”
“Hm,” Stiles contemplates, stroking his chin.
“And Erica!” Scott suddenly gasps, snapping his fingers in Stiles’s direction. Stiles holds in a startled laugh at the old-time gesture.
“She is way more smug than usual whenever Derek is around. Actually,” Scott pauses, casting a strange look at Stiles. “With you, too. She’s been acting like she knows a secret or something. But mostly around Derek, but also around you?”
Stiles just stares at him, open-mouthed and wary. Genuinely confused but a little off put, he sputters, “I have no secrets?”
Scott gives him a Look, but continues on. “Isaac hasn’t been changing much, even with Derek in the room, but man. Thinking about it like this, like comparing their normal behavior to their behavior with Derek in the same room? It kind of makes them all seem a lot more smug.”
“Maybe they’re just, like, super happy to be in a pack? Super happy to have Derek as their leader? Weirder things have happened, man.”
“I don’t think that’s it, though.” Scott frowns, nearly pouting. He groans, “I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s just, it’s all—”
“Derek’s fault.” Stiles finishes, blowing a raspberry. “Of course it is.”
His words war a little with his mind; with the way he knows that, actually, not much is truly Derek’s fault anymore. Sure, when they’d just been starting out as a pack, things had gotten hairy—literally and figuratively—but now, some odd years later, they’d all grown and matured, Derek most of all. He is, in fact, a rather wonderful leader. All things considered. He’s also sort of got this thing where he feels responsible for everyone at every hour of every day, and takes all of the guilt and anger at every failure as a personal affront, which is actually not so wonderful at all.
As a pack, they all care for each other. That’s a given—you can’t really be pack and not care. So it doesn’t sit well with any of them, the way that Derek deliberately puts himself in danger for them at any cost, just to keep them safe, regardless of what that means for his health and safety. And okay, maybe it’s a leadership thing and there are traditions and leadership things that he’d been taught as a young boy by his entirely werewolf family, but times change. Rules change. Welcome to the new age, and all that. Stiles will not stand by any rules or traditions that involve one member of the pack having to wring themselves dry for the sake of the pack, not when there are better, safer alternatives.
But Derek is their alpha, and while he doesn’t control them and is actually incredibly lenient and lax in his control, he refuses to allow any of them to take the blame for mistakes he thinks are his. Which includes, basically, everything he’s ever done. The guy has some serious issues, Stiles thinks, and he really has to do something about that.
But it’s so blatantly obvious, at least to Stiles, that he needs help with that. He needs it, though he’d never in his life admit it. Can you imagine Derek Hale admitting that he needs help with his feelings? With trust? Please.
Stiles may or may not have taken it upon himself to be the pack chew toy, if only for the possibility of getting to snuggle with them after getting tossed around a bit. (Maybe he and Derek are a little more similar than he’d originally thought?) But his endgame has always secretly been trying to make Derek happy, which he thinks he’s definitely getting better at.
Derek is never openly affectionate with any of them, but he does touch and nuzzle where needed; some sort of alpha thing that cracks Stiles up almost as much as it makes him irrationally jealous. All he has to see is Derek putting a hand on Isaac’s shoulder, letting his fingertips touch skin around his neckline, a reassuring alpha touch, and Stiles instantly has to look away.
It’s not that he’s possessive by nature, or possessive at all, really. It’s just difficult to see the person you’re in love with dealing out affection to everyone around you, except you.
Obviously he understands why he doesn’t get the same treatment—hint: not a werewolf.
But it doesn’t sting any less.
But Stiles is so not the type of guy to just skitter off and be quiet about it. Instead, he makes his own affectionate advances in hopes of returning the favor for Derek by sidling up beside him, a hair’s breath away but still not touching, and okay maybe part of it is selfishness because he wants it. There’s definitely something wrong with him, right? Because it’s true. It’s there and it’s real and he can’t really explain it yet, but he wants desperately to be close to Derek Hale.
In any way he can get.
“Well,” he sighs, looking back up at Scott with pursed lips. “Maybe keep a better eye on him, then? If he’s doing some sort of darkside thing then we definitely need to know.”
Scott’s already shaking his head, denying the sentiment. He looks like Stiles has kicked his puppy. If he had a puppy. “He’s not going darkside.”
“Whatever is happening, dude, it led to Boyd with broken legs. Doesn’t sound like a good thing.”
“He won’t go darkside.” Scott asserts, expression unflinching for only a moment, long enough for Stiles to grudgingly shrug his shoulders.
“Just keep an eye on him, man. We don’t want anyone getting hurt, not any of us, Derek included.” Stiles averts his eyes, stares in fascination at his cluttered desktop across the room. He pretends like his voice had been steady, and that Scott isn’t looking at him funny.
“Got it.” Scott hesitates. “Listen, man, are you…okay? You’re not feeling different or anything, right?”
Stiles snaps to attention so quick he knows he looks guilty. He blows another raspberry, says, “Same old Stilinski, dude. Smart and devilishly handsome human pack friend, special agent, and all that. I deserve a badge or a plaque or something honestly, why haven’t I thought about this until now? I definitely deserve a plaque.”
Scott laughs, quiet and relieved. Stiles thinks maybe he’s dodged a bullet with this one and how blatantly is he broadcasting his feelings for Derek if even Scott got a whiff of them? He’ll need to tamper down on the pining and put better guards up, especially around Derek himself. This is, if anything, a good reminder of self-control, of which he seems to have less and less these days.
Can anyone blame him though? Derek fucking Hale.
“Good,” Scott grins, plopping down in front of Stiles’s TV. He plugs in a video game Stiles can’t see and connects a second controller for Stiles. He hears a familiar opening scene and grins.
“I can’t have you getting all weird on me, too.”
“Me? Weird?” Stiles guffaws, loud and throaty, tongue sticking out a bit.
“Never.”