Fic: The Woods are Lovely Dark and Deep, 4/? (Teen Wolf, R, Derek/Stiles)
Title: The Woods are Lovely Dark and Deep
Part: 3/?
Author: dancinbutterfly
Pairing: Derek/Stiles (Allison/Scott)
Words: 2150
Rated: R
Warning: Graphic violence, mentions of historical torture and non-con, spoilers through S2E8.
Beta: Thanks for the quick and dirty beta by ariadne83
Notes: written for the prompt at the comment ficathon: Derek/Stiles, They took his mate, hurt his mate, and they're all going to bleed for it. Also, I havent posted a WIP in ages but Teen Wolf seems to play by different rules
Summary: Stiles is taken as a message to the Hale pack. Derek and the rest are searching for him but with his captors in possession of a true monster on a leash, their efforts may not be enough.
Chapter 4 - I Hold With Those Who Favor fire
What Hank gives them is a set of latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates in freaking minutes and seconds. Five wolves and nearly thirty hunters crammed into one small hotel is claustrophobic but Chris has the map and the GPS and Derek, well, he's the Alpha.
Yeah. That's why he's at the center of this. Not because the most important person in his world is being tortured, and partially eaten, right now.
"Best I can tell it’s a solid ten miles off the last marked road here." Chris says tapping the map in a patch of undeveloped mountains. "Unless there's a larger path not on the map we're going to have to go in on foot."
"We can't do that," Derek protests. "We can't bring the power we'd need on foot."
One of the hunters snorts. "Obviously you've never seen a handheld rocket launcher."
"I have," Erica says and the room turns to stare at her. "What? I watch Buffy. She used one of those to blow up the Judge. It was awesome. You think that'll be enough?"
"We brought four," The hunter says, grinning at her. "And a backpack full of grenades."
Erica smiles back, slow and sexy and if Derek were closer, he would smack the back of her head. They don’t have time for her to flirt. Especially not with an Argent, Jesus.
"You can't use grenades," Derek hisses. "Stiles is with the ogre wherever the Ezüstells are keeping it. How exactly are we supposed to get him out if we blow him up?"
"Derek-?" Chris begins but Derek shakes his head.
"You know to kill them, don't you? You do, right?" He sounds young to his own ears, like the little boy demanding that his father tell him that it's all a story, a lie.
"Last time anyone in our family saw one was in France just after Waterloo so I don’t know what would be effective now." Chris admits. "But the books all say the same things. The only weaknesses are the eyes, the soft spot under the jaw, inside the mouth, maybe the groin."
"Yeah," Derek croaks. "Exactly. Wolves go for those spots with teeth because that’s it. Those are our only ins with an ogre. Everywhere else is impervious. The whole point of the cars was to have something big to hit him with so that one of us," he waves a hand at himself and his pack, "can try and get in a killing blow. Even then it’s a fucking stretch. It can just wait until we get tired and pick us off one at a fucking time."
"A bullet through the eye is as good as a knife or claw." The grenade happy hunter points out.
"Is it? Are you sure? If it was your girlfriend? Your mom? Would you be sure?"
Grenade Guy goes quiet.
The room is eerily silent. That many people in that small a space should never be so still. In the end, it's no surprise that Chris is the one who breaks the silence. "We go in on foot then. Any of you who don't want to go can stay here but everyone else, we take precision weapons we can carry and hope for the best."
"Or die trying," Scott says, meaning every word.
"Or die trying," Derek agrees.
"Why am I here?" Lydia asks.
"You care about Stiles." Scott says and she rolls her eyes. Yeah, okay. She does but it's obvious that she isn't buying what his puppy eyes are selling.
"You're here because on top of being pack, your immunity comes from your access to magic," Derek says. He figured that out when the whole mess with Peter nearly ruined everything. "Whatever they're using to hold the ogre in, there's no way it's just simple metal or rock. We may need you to open whatever it is that's keeping Stone Foot in if it's keeping us out."
"You're Dawn," Erica declares, pleased. "Mixed with Willow with Cordelia's fashion sense."
Lydia gives her cold stare. "What are you talking about?"
"From Buffy? Only the greatest horror show of all time? No?" She sighs and slumps back. "You guys are seriously the worst supernatural beings and hunters ever. I'm disowning all of you."
Derek winces. In that moment she sounds so much like Stiles he feels like it's almost as if he's speaking through her. Fuck. Fucking fuck.
Stiles spews random facts and references all the time which is simultaneously one of his most endearing and annoying quirks. Derek doesn’t get half of them. Okay, if he's honest, more than half and Derek's no idiot. He's actually pretty smart.
Even after the fire, Derek was once the kind of person who had a future. He earned graduated summa cum laude from CUNY with a BA in biology when he and Laura were still in New York. Even so the kind of stuff Stiles tends to ramble on about is beyond him. Derek thinks it's probably because Stiles is too fucking brilliant by a mile.
Sometimes, if they're in bed, quiet and curled up with no one to hear them, Derek will ask him to slow down, explain what he means. When he does, Stiles lights up and launches into detail. His head is usually resting on one Derek's shoulders so his hands can wave freely through the air safely away from either of their faces.
In a lot of ways moments like that were better than the sex. Those were times when he actually learned about Stiles, where he shared his own curiosity and amusement and let Stiles know him. Times passed together like that made a mate more than base sex. Derek never said I love you. Not ever. But occasionally, when Stiles was sleeping, but Derek would toy with his long nimble fingers and think it.
The stillness of the room gives Derek enough time to actually think what he's been pushing down: he should have said I love you, at least once in the months since he started actually feeling it. Stiles wanted to hear the words. He could smell the desire for them as easily as the physical lust. He also knows that Stiles felt that couldn't put it out there himself. He was only a teenager after all and one with crippling insecurities he used his babbling and cutting humor to cover.
It's not as if Derek could blame him. Their relationship wasn't hidden but it wasn't established either. They were who they were as pack with the addition of sex. He hadn't done anything to indicate they were more outside of bed and Derek knows he's not the most expressive person on earth either. Everyone knew that but there were so many times he could have, should have said something, done something.
If he'd told Stiles he loved him, he could have explained about mating. He could've finished the bond they'd inadvertently started in those deep fucks and quiet moments, made the bite, staked his claim; maybe he'd know more. His parents always said that mated pairs had a sixth sense about each other. Maybe it was psychic? Maybe it was like a werewolf sex GPS?
He doesn’t know. All the adults had been gone before he had the chance to ask. He can't let Stiles be gone before he gets the chance to find out. It's unacceptable. It is impossible - a thing that cannot happen in a universe that currently exists.
Boyd, ever practical Boyd, is the first to speak up. "So, when do we leave?"
"Tomorrow," Chris declares, monarchical in tone like the Queen of fucking England.
Derek explodes out of his chair because enough is enough. He is not taking orders and risks assessments from goddamn hunters when it comes to his friend, his Stiles, his goddamn mate. "Do you know what that thing could do to him in a night?"
"Do you know what it can do to us if we're not rested?" Chris shoots back. "Go the fuck to sleep. Take a sleeping pill, have a drink, smoke a joint, do that dog pile thing you wolves do. I don’t care. But you need to rest. All of us do. Being at the top of our game is literally the only chance we have to win." A muscle in his jaw ticks. The smell of anger rolls off Chris in waves and Derek can hear his heartbeat speed up to match. "And we need to win because Hank has Allison. If we don’t come back, they'll integrate her and they don’t treat the matriarchy the same way we do."
"How do they treat their matriarchy then?" Lydia asks.
Fear adds to the mix of smells and disgust. It's putrid but familiar. Derek knows that it's been rolling off him in waves for days now. "Did you ever watch those Animal Planet shows about lionesses, how their prides are structured?" Chris asks her.
Lydia's lips form a perfect O shape that would've done things to Stile's brain and cock that Derek would've taken shameless advantage of. If he were here. If he weren’t remembering that NatGeo special Stiles turned on after sex once that talked all about how lionesses worked as a unit to do all the hunting and childrearing around one, typically lazy male lion who fucked them all.
Isaac actually shudders. "Dude, gross."
"Yeah," Grenade Guy agrees. "If anything it should be the other way around. Packs are for wolves."
"So what," Boyd demands, "You think we're all Derek's harem or some shit?"
"I was just saying-"
"Yeah I know what you're saying," Boyd shoots back.
"Shut up all of you," Derek snaps. "You aren't helping. You know what would help? Figuring out how we're going to get my mate out of an ogre's cave without getting him killed. So let's do that." He may be panting. He may have just called Stiles his mate, out loud for the first time ever. He can't be sure. His world is too busy spinning out from under his feet.
"I was thinking," Chris says in a tone as icy as the blue of his eyes, "That if violence doesn’t work - we could offer Stone Foot a trade."
That brings even Derek up short because wow. Just… wow. He hadn't even considered that option. Tearing the smug bastard's throat out with his human teeth and licking up the blood sure but not that. He's surprised how much he likes the idea.
Grenade Guy clears his throat. Apparently he's someone important enough to have an opinion. "Chris, I don't know-"
"My brother-in-law wants to keep Allison."Chris says. He casts his eyes to Scott for confirmation of this. The two of them don't like each other. They will never like each other but they both love Allison more than anything on earth and know it. So when Scott nods in agreement, Chris takes it as wrote.
"He cast a teenager to a creature that likes to eat its prey alive over months and years by nature, and he did it out of a sense of perverse pleasure. He's trying to steal my only child. So I intend to walk out of this shit fest alive, with all of you, Allison and Stiles. So if brute force doesn’t work, if it comes down to trading Heinrich Ezüstell for Stiles Stilinski, then yes," he folds his arms over his chest, "I will absolutely do it. Any objections?"
Derek doesn't wait to hear what the humans or hell, even his pack has to say. He doesn't fucking care about any of their opinions on this. They don't matter. "No. I'm in."
"Derek-" Scott starts but Chris is talking over him.
"Anyone one else want to say something? No? Good. Go get some sleep, everyone, real sleep. We've got a late check out because I want everyone to be actually rested and I expect everyone to eat in the morning - especially the wolves. Then and only then do we let slip the dogs of war." His glare manages to encompass the entire room somehow, even the people standing behind him. "Am I clear?"
Everyone in the room nods. Then Isaac climbs to his feet, crosses to Derek, grabs him by the wrist in a soft human grip and drags him towards the door. Derek will never say so out loud, but of all of the betas he's made, Isaac is his favorite. There is so much of his own pain reflected in the eyes of his broken pup. Taking care of him has helped Derek, made them both stronger in ways they both understand but don't discuss.
It's because he's spent so long working to heal Isaac's ingrained fears and heart-deep wounds that Derek doesn't snap or jerk away. He just lets himself be led out. He doesn't need to look back to know his pack are behind him.
Part: 3/?
Author: dancinbutterfly
Pairing: Derek/Stiles (Allison/Scott)
Words: 2150
Rated: R
Warning: Graphic violence, mentions of historical torture and non-con, spoilers through S2E8.
Beta: Thanks for the quick and dirty beta by ariadne83
Notes: written for the prompt at the comment ficathon: Derek/Stiles, They took his mate, hurt his mate, and they're all going to bleed for it. Also, I havent posted a WIP in ages but Teen Wolf seems to play by different rules
Summary: Stiles is taken as a message to the Hale pack. Derek and the rest are searching for him but with his captors in possession of a true monster on a leash, their efforts may not be enough.
Chapter 4 - I Hold With Those Who Favor fire
What Hank gives them is a set of latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates in freaking minutes and seconds. Five wolves and nearly thirty hunters crammed into one small hotel is claustrophobic but Chris has the map and the GPS and Derek, well, he's the Alpha.
Yeah. That's why he's at the center of this. Not because the most important person in his world is being tortured, and partially eaten, right now.
"Best I can tell it’s a solid ten miles off the last marked road here." Chris says tapping the map in a patch of undeveloped mountains. "Unless there's a larger path not on the map we're going to have to go in on foot."
"We can't do that," Derek protests. "We can't bring the power we'd need on foot."
One of the hunters snorts. "Obviously you've never seen a handheld rocket launcher."
"I have," Erica says and the room turns to stare at her. "What? I watch Buffy. She used one of those to blow up the Judge. It was awesome. You think that'll be enough?"
"We brought four," The hunter says, grinning at her. "And a backpack full of grenades."
Erica smiles back, slow and sexy and if Derek were closer, he would smack the back of her head. They don’t have time for her to flirt. Especially not with an Argent, Jesus.
"You can't use grenades," Derek hisses. "Stiles is with the ogre wherever the Ezüstells are keeping it. How exactly are we supposed to get him out if we blow him up?"
"Derek-?" Chris begins but Derek shakes his head.
"You know to kill them, don't you? You do, right?" He sounds young to his own ears, like the little boy demanding that his father tell him that it's all a story, a lie.
"Last time anyone in our family saw one was in France just after Waterloo so I don’t know what would be effective now." Chris admits. "But the books all say the same things. The only weaknesses are the eyes, the soft spot under the jaw, inside the mouth, maybe the groin."
"Yeah," Derek croaks. "Exactly. Wolves go for those spots with teeth because that’s it. Those are our only ins with an ogre. Everywhere else is impervious. The whole point of the cars was to have something big to hit him with so that one of us," he waves a hand at himself and his pack, "can try and get in a killing blow. Even then it’s a fucking stretch. It can just wait until we get tired and pick us off one at a fucking time."
"A bullet through the eye is as good as a knife or claw." The grenade happy hunter points out.
"Is it? Are you sure? If it was your girlfriend? Your mom? Would you be sure?"
Grenade Guy goes quiet.
The room is eerily silent. That many people in that small a space should never be so still. In the end, it's no surprise that Chris is the one who breaks the silence. "We go in on foot then. Any of you who don't want to go can stay here but everyone else, we take precision weapons we can carry and hope for the best."
"Or die trying," Scott says, meaning every word.
"Or die trying," Derek agrees.
"Why am I here?" Lydia asks.
"You care about Stiles." Scott says and she rolls her eyes. Yeah, okay. She does but it's obvious that she isn't buying what his puppy eyes are selling.
"You're here because on top of being pack, your immunity comes from your access to magic," Derek says. He figured that out when the whole mess with Peter nearly ruined everything. "Whatever they're using to hold the ogre in, there's no way it's just simple metal or rock. We may need you to open whatever it is that's keeping Stone Foot in if it's keeping us out."
"You're Dawn," Erica declares, pleased. "Mixed with Willow with Cordelia's fashion sense."
Lydia gives her cold stare. "What are you talking about?"
"From Buffy? Only the greatest horror show of all time? No?" She sighs and slumps back. "You guys are seriously the worst supernatural beings and hunters ever. I'm disowning all of you."
Derek winces. In that moment she sounds so much like Stiles he feels like it's almost as if he's speaking through her. Fuck. Fucking fuck.
Stiles spews random facts and references all the time which is simultaneously one of his most endearing and annoying quirks. Derek doesn’t get half of them. Okay, if he's honest, more than half and Derek's no idiot. He's actually pretty smart.
Even after the fire, Derek was once the kind of person who had a future. He earned graduated summa cum laude from CUNY with a BA in biology when he and Laura were still in New York. Even so the kind of stuff Stiles tends to ramble on about is beyond him. Derek thinks it's probably because Stiles is too fucking brilliant by a mile.
Sometimes, if they're in bed, quiet and curled up with no one to hear them, Derek will ask him to slow down, explain what he means. When he does, Stiles lights up and launches into detail. His head is usually resting on one Derek's shoulders so his hands can wave freely through the air safely away from either of their faces.
In a lot of ways moments like that were better than the sex. Those were times when he actually learned about Stiles, where he shared his own curiosity and amusement and let Stiles know him. Times passed together like that made a mate more than base sex. Derek never said I love you. Not ever. But occasionally, when Stiles was sleeping, but Derek would toy with his long nimble fingers and think it.
The stillness of the room gives Derek enough time to actually think what he's been pushing down: he should have said I love you, at least once in the months since he started actually feeling it. Stiles wanted to hear the words. He could smell the desire for them as easily as the physical lust. He also knows that Stiles felt that couldn't put it out there himself. He was only a teenager after all and one with crippling insecurities he used his babbling and cutting humor to cover.
It's not as if Derek could blame him. Their relationship wasn't hidden but it wasn't established either. They were who they were as pack with the addition of sex. He hadn't done anything to indicate they were more outside of bed and Derek knows he's not the most expressive person on earth either. Everyone knew that but there were so many times he could have, should have said something, done something.
If he'd told Stiles he loved him, he could have explained about mating. He could've finished the bond they'd inadvertently started in those deep fucks and quiet moments, made the bite, staked his claim; maybe he'd know more. His parents always said that mated pairs had a sixth sense about each other. Maybe it was psychic? Maybe it was like a werewolf sex GPS?
He doesn’t know. All the adults had been gone before he had the chance to ask. He can't let Stiles be gone before he gets the chance to find out. It's unacceptable. It is impossible - a thing that cannot happen in a universe that currently exists.
Boyd, ever practical Boyd, is the first to speak up. "So, when do we leave?"
"Tomorrow," Chris declares, monarchical in tone like the Queen of fucking England.
Derek explodes out of his chair because enough is enough. He is not taking orders and risks assessments from goddamn hunters when it comes to his friend, his Stiles, his goddamn mate. "Do you know what that thing could do to him in a night?"
"Do you know what it can do to us if we're not rested?" Chris shoots back. "Go the fuck to sleep. Take a sleeping pill, have a drink, smoke a joint, do that dog pile thing you wolves do. I don’t care. But you need to rest. All of us do. Being at the top of our game is literally the only chance we have to win." A muscle in his jaw ticks. The smell of anger rolls off Chris in waves and Derek can hear his heartbeat speed up to match. "And we need to win because Hank has Allison. If we don’t come back, they'll integrate her and they don’t treat the matriarchy the same way we do."
"How do they treat their matriarchy then?" Lydia asks.
Fear adds to the mix of smells and disgust. It's putrid but familiar. Derek knows that it's been rolling off him in waves for days now. "Did you ever watch those Animal Planet shows about lionesses, how their prides are structured?" Chris asks her.
Lydia's lips form a perfect O shape that would've done things to Stile's brain and cock that Derek would've taken shameless advantage of. If he were here. If he weren’t remembering that NatGeo special Stiles turned on after sex once that talked all about how lionesses worked as a unit to do all the hunting and childrearing around one, typically lazy male lion who fucked them all.
Isaac actually shudders. "Dude, gross."
"Yeah," Grenade Guy agrees. "If anything it should be the other way around. Packs are for wolves."
"So what," Boyd demands, "You think we're all Derek's harem or some shit?"
"I was just saying-"
"Yeah I know what you're saying," Boyd shoots back.
"Shut up all of you," Derek snaps. "You aren't helping. You know what would help? Figuring out how we're going to get my mate out of an ogre's cave without getting him killed. So let's do that." He may be panting. He may have just called Stiles his mate, out loud for the first time ever. He can't be sure. His world is too busy spinning out from under his feet.
"I was thinking," Chris says in a tone as icy as the blue of his eyes, "That if violence doesn’t work - we could offer Stone Foot a trade."
That brings even Derek up short because wow. Just… wow. He hadn't even considered that option. Tearing the smug bastard's throat out with his human teeth and licking up the blood sure but not that. He's surprised how much he likes the idea.
Grenade Guy clears his throat. Apparently he's someone important enough to have an opinion. "Chris, I don't know-"
"My brother-in-law wants to keep Allison."Chris says. He casts his eyes to Scott for confirmation of this. The two of them don't like each other. They will never like each other but they both love Allison more than anything on earth and know it. So when Scott nods in agreement, Chris takes it as wrote.
"He cast a teenager to a creature that likes to eat its prey alive over months and years by nature, and he did it out of a sense of perverse pleasure. He's trying to steal my only child. So I intend to walk out of this shit fest alive, with all of you, Allison and Stiles. So if brute force doesn’t work, if it comes down to trading Heinrich Ezüstell for Stiles Stilinski, then yes," he folds his arms over his chest, "I will absolutely do it. Any objections?"
Derek doesn't wait to hear what the humans or hell, even his pack has to say. He doesn't fucking care about any of their opinions on this. They don't matter. "No. I'm in."
"Derek-" Scott starts but Chris is talking over him.
"Anyone one else want to say something? No? Good. Go get some sleep, everyone, real sleep. We've got a late check out because I want everyone to be actually rested and I expect everyone to eat in the morning - especially the wolves. Then and only then do we let slip the dogs of war." His glare manages to encompass the entire room somehow, even the people standing behind him. "Am I clear?"
Everyone in the room nods. Then Isaac climbs to his feet, crosses to Derek, grabs him by the wrist in a soft human grip and drags him towards the door. Derek will never say so out loud, but of all of the betas he's made, Isaac is his favorite. There is so much of his own pain reflected in the eyes of his broken pup. Taking care of him has helped Derek, made them both stronger in ways they both understand but don't discuss.
It's because he's spent so long working to heal Isaac's ingrained fears and heart-deep wounds that Derek doesn't snap or jerk away. He just lets himself be led out. He doesn't need to look back to know his pack are behind him.