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a warm gun
chapter three
The past doesn't always stay there, and the dead don't always stay dead. Stiles is about to learn this the hard way. (sequel to Another Night's Dawn).
derek/stiles. ♢ teen wolf. ♢ pg-13. ♢ pre-slash, sequel to.
if i owned them, my fanfics would actually be episodes.
a warm gun.
chapter three.
previously
Scott sat perched on the edge of his bed, legs jiggling nervously as he watched Stiles. His best friend was uncharacteristically quiet, sitting on the floor with his knees drawn to his chest. He’d muttered nonsensically about ‘she’ and ‘being back’ and how it was all ‘impossible’ for the first ten minutes before lapsing into silence.
It scared him more than anything that Stiles was silent. Stiles was never silent. He was the one constant in Scott’s life, the one thing he knew above all else. That Stiles never stopped moving - not his hands, his mouth, his brain. He was always on. But now he was inexplicably off.
The only way he knew how to deal with this was to call Derek. The older Beta must’ve decided it was a pack thing, and called Brenna and Zane who showed up several minutes ago. Scott could smell the curiosity and worry from the Betas. In the last eight months they’d been in town, they’d taken to Stiles. He was sort of like the mascot of the pack - not that the human considered himself pack, not that Derek would even admit he was aloud. But Zane thought of Stiles like a little brother and Brenna - though, like Derek, would never admit aloud - cared for him as well.
“Did he say Kate, specifically?” Brenna questioned, her nostrils flaring and her brow furrowing as she honed in on the scents surrounding Stiles.
“No. Just she’s back and that’s it. There’s no one else he could be talking about. I already checked with Allison and Lydia’s still in a coma, so it’s not her.” With a helpless shrug, he gestured to Stiles, “Who or what else could scare him enough, someone that we know, to make him like this?”
“What’s going on?” Derek asked, entering through the bedroom door for a change. He momentarily paused at seeing Stiles practically rocking himself in a corner. Mentally shaking himself from the surprise of Stiles’ state, he snapped, “What happened?”
“Kate’s back.” Scott was the only one to offer the answer. He knew why Brenna and Zane hadn’t offered the information, because Derek’s eyes instantly flashed blue, everything about him tensing from his jaw to his fists.
“Are you sure?”
“Stiles showed up here twenty minutes ago completely freaked out. All he said that I could make sense of was ‘she’s back’ before he ended up like this.” Scott gestured to the ball on the floor, “It has to be her.”
“What I don’t understand though,” Zane started, “Is why would she go to Stiles? They’ve never really had any actual contact before, right?”
“He’s the human. He’s the most vulnerable because while she’s nuts, I don’t see her using Allison as bait. He’s directly connected to Scott, she knows that Derek feels some sort of responsibility for him because he and Scott are part of the same pack by way of Peter, and he’s also the son of the Sheriff. There are multiple rational reasons to go to Stiles.” Brenna theorized as she slowly walked toward the boy. When their toes practically lined up, she crouched in front of him, assessing.
“Maybe she’s making a move?” Scott offered.
“But what is it?” Derek growled, pacing restlessly from the doorjamb to the window and back again. If Kate were back, he should’ve smelt her. The cloud around Stiles was familiar, putrid with fear and confusion. But the distinctively womanly scent that he could pick up niggled at the back of his head. It wasn’t the Kate he remembered, the Kate he’d purposely ingrained into his mind for moments like this.
Brenna tuned out the boys in the background as they threw around theories and strategies. They didn’t know what they were dealing with, but they were already trying to figure out the best strategic way to kill the female hunter without getting backlash from her brother, whom they had a truce with at the moment that benefited everyone in Beacon Hills.
Stiles was fidgeting, running trembling hands over his buzzed hair, gnawing at his lips until they were plump and red, squeezing his eyes shut and thumping his head back against the wall. He looked like he was warring with himself in his head, and she could feel herself relating to that. Without thinking, she reached out and slipping her hand into his lax one.
It took a moment before she was able to recognize the minute reaction - the soft pressure around her fingers, the flicker in his eyes. “Stiles?” She asked him quietly, searching his eyes and seeing that they were brightening with alertness.
He exhaled, the breath holding just a bit of tone to it like he was trying to form words. But he jerked a little when the three male wolves crowded in behind Brenna.
“What happened? - Did she hurt you? - What does she want? - Are you okay?” The questions overlapped one another as they all barraged Stiles with their individual inquiries.
“It’s not Kate.” Stiles said has he pressed his back against the wall, lifting his hips up to slide himself into a standing position. He still reclined against the solid base of wall, his legs feeling weak like he’d just run a mile. It was hard to believe that just a couple of hours ago, he had. He’d been running from a rabid Beta. It seemed like ages ago.
“What?” Everyone questioned after a short pause to digest the words. The tension melted from the air as the direness seemed to deflate with those three words.
“I wasn’t talking about Kate. She’s not back.”
Scott watched from the corner of his eye as Derek, Brenna and Zane reacted. He was more focused on how small Stiles was trying to make himself. He looked exhausted. Like he’d just been thrown into hell and torn back out of it.
“Useless, Goddamn humans.” Derek growled, his hand smacking into the wall by the doorframe.
“Hey!” Scott shouted indignantly as every piece of furniture, and whatever sat on it, seemed to shake from the vibrations in the plaster. His words fell on deaf ears as Derek stomped from his room without another word.
Brenna and Zane lingered a few moments longer to make sure that Stiles was alright, before following Derek’s footsteps and leaving the McCall residence. He waited until he couldn’t hear the roar of Brenna’s Charger, before crowding in on his best friend. “What’s going on Stiles? What, or who, has you so freaked out?”
“I got home and she was just standing in the living room, man.” Stiles rubbed his hands through the three-week growth of hair on his head. He wished in that moment that he kept it longer so that he could pull and feel the satisfactory stretch and burn. But no, he had to shave it ‘cause it was fewer products to have to worry about trying to figure out. Not all guys could be Jackson, after all, who knew how to work Got 2 B’s entire line effortlessly. “Like she’d never died. She was right there.”
The gnawing feeling of butterflies in Scott’s stomach that had been pestering him since first seeing the state Stiles was in was now a full on T-Rex snacking on his insides.
“It’s my Mom, Scott. My Mom’s alive.”
In Scott’s immediate shock, he failed to detect the sharp intake of breath in his backyard. He missed the spike of fear in the air, the angered growl, the slight tang of wet dog that clung to every werewolf. What he did hear, were the hurried footsteps crunching on grass in the opposite direction from the McCall home. But he was too wrapped up in Stiles’ bombshell to put further thought into it. His best friend needed him more than his wolf’s curiosity needed to be sated.
“How is this even possible?” Scott questioned, his mind running a mile a minute. He had been there with Stiles at the funeral, watched the coffin be put in the ground, had punched Jackson the first time he made a crack about Stiles wanting his Mommy during a fight. He remembered vividly the way his best friend had tried to put himself back together again after his idyllic world was smashed to pieces.
“How the hell am I supposed to know?” Stiles snapped in response.
“Didn’t she tell you?”
Stiles opened his mouth, leaving it agape for a moment as words failed him. “She wanted to, but I told her to get out.”
“You…” Scott blinked, “You told your mother who’s just come back from the dead to get out? Are you stupid?”
Stiles glared, “I was in shock! I was angry! I just went to her grave, Scott, and four days later, she’s standing in my kitchen. Alive. Not standing there like she’s undead, Scott. One hundred percent real live breathing human. What else was I going to do? Offer to make coffee?”
Scott nodded, understanding that it must’ve been incredibly terrifying for Stiles to walk into an assumedly empty house and spot a ghost. “Do you know how to find her now?”
“She…” Stiles brow furrowed, “She said I’d know how. I don’t know how. I came here to see if maybe you could track her?”
“I’ve never done that before, I-I wouldn’t know how. Derek hasn’t taught me how to do that.” Scott admitted.
“It can’t be too hard. Have you ever been at school and wanted to see Allison so much that you wandered the halls until suddenly you were able to find her?” Stiles watched as Scott lit up, confirming what the human had suspected. “Yeah, that’s tracking, Scott.” He spoke as if talking to a toddler.
“Okay…” Scott said slowly, choosing to ignore his best friend’s patronizing tone. “But how am I supposed to track your mother?”
“You’re the werewolf; shouldn’t you figure that part out? Why does the human have to do all the leg work?” In actuality, Stiles hadn’t thought of that. If he had, he would’ve brought something she’d touched while encroaching in a home she gave up on, abandoned. “Can you smell anything off in my scent? She… she hugged me, but I’ve showered since.”
Scott paused, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply as he stepped up to Stiles. His brow furrowed after a moment as he tried to sift through the myriad of scents attached to his best friend. There was Brenna who’d tried to comfort him not ten minutes ago, soap, faint traces of mud and Derek, the leather of his jeep and… something floral with a hint of spice. It reminded him of Missus Stilinski and her sugar cookies. His eyes snapped open, a victorious smile spreading his boyish features. “I think I got it!”
“Good boy.” Stiles resisted the urge to pat Scott on the head, who was acting as if his tail would be wagging from learning a new trick if he had one. “Don’t lose it.” He instructed before leading Scott from the house. “I’ll drive; you hunt that scent down like it’s a juicy rabbit.”
It took two hours and four detours when Scott’s nose got distracted, before he was able to track the right scent to a motel just outside of Beacon Hills’ welcome and leaving signs. They had been sitting in the parking lot for a quarter of the hour, staring that the door where Stiles’ mother was waiting for him.
Scott stared at Stiles’ blank face, trying to get a read on them just from scents shifting in the air. His emotions were erratic, stress the most consistent as it choked the wolf. “I can go with you.” He offered, hoping that Stiles would like that idea. He didn’t like the situation and didn’t trust his pack mate’s mother.
Stiles shook his head negatively though. “I have to do this.” The ‘alone’ was implied, almost as apparent at the end of the sentence as if he’d actually said it. With a deep breath, Stiles peeled his fingers from the steering wheel, flexing them as he threw a weak smile at Scott.
“I’ll be right here.” Scott promised, “I won’t be listening though to give you some privacy, so if you need me, go to the window or throw something at it or… something.”
Stiles smiled at his friend’s concern. It felt nice to be back to The Stiles and Scott Show. Just the two of them being there for one another. He’d missed their friendship being easy in the last year. Not that this was particularly easy.
Scott clapped his shoulder, returning Stiles’ smile with a tight-lipped one of his own, “Good luck.”
Stiles got out of his Jeep and walked to the door that Scott had claimed his mother’s scent was strongest behind. He paused to wipe his hands on the thighs of his jeans repeatedly. They were shaking and sweating, the stress making his nerves fragile. He was prepped to knock when he heard the lock shift and click for the inside. Taking that as his cue, his hand closed around the knob, and with a deep breath, he opened the door.
next
This is out earlier than I intended to be posting it, because I'm celebrating finally finishing chapter six, and chapters 7/8 which are two interludes to carry on subplots. So woohoo! The story's getting a move on. The next chapter should be up mid-week. Wednesday or Thursdayish.
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