FIC: Intangibles 4/? l Mature l Stiles Stilinski and Derek Hale l Teen Wolf
Title: Drowning
Author: Roz
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Depictions of graphic violence (violence canon to the violence in the show).
Summary: Jackson laughed. “If this guy is your downfall, I will laugh at you. Loud. Obnoxious laughter. My laughter will follow you all the way to hell. We’re gonna put that on your tombstone - we’re going to cut you in half and bury you, and buy you a tombstone just to mock you on it.”
Disclaimer: I do not own Teen wolf and I make no profit from this fictional depiction.
The first thing Stiles was aware of was the muted buzz of the machines. He knew exactly where he was before he even opened his eyes, from the whirl of machines - from the smell - alone. He was in a hospital. He hated hospitals. Stiles groaned, lifted a hand to rub his head and poked himself in the eye with the clunky heart monitor attached to his finger. “Fuck,” he groaned, lifting his other hand to rub his eye. “Shit.” His throat felt scraped raw.
He opened his eyes at the laughter; his eyelids felt like they had anchors attached to them, but he managed it. Jackson was slouched down in the chair beside the bed which was a mind fuck all on its own. Nobody could really explain why Jackson hadn’t died. Which was fine by Stiles - but it really fucked over the EMTs, who had jobs riding on that. You can’t just pronounce - he never really understood why the term was ‘pronounce’ instead of ‘announce’ but whatever - a kid dead and have that kid turn up to not really be dead.
“Smooth,” Jackson said, but his grin didn’t really leave his face.
“What are you doing here?” Stiles croaked. Jackson got up to give Stiles a glass of water. He reconsidered it, and then put a hand at the back of Stiles’s neck and helped him take several hungry gulps of water. Jackson sat the glass back down on the table beside the bed and Stiles sank back down against the pillow.
Jackson shrugged, once he was seated in his chair again. “We’re all taking shifts,” he answered.
“If they wanted me dead, they would’ve cut my throat - I don’t really think shifts are necessary,” Stiles said, lowering a hand to his stomach. Idly, he fingered the bandage. The wound beneath them felt raw, but it was a distant kind of raw, obviously from the drugs. They made him feel languid, like he was floating. It was nice but he hated it at the same time.
Jackson shrugged again. He didn’t look interested in the conversation at hand. “Hale doesn’t want you to die. I don’t know what you want me to do about it.”
Stiles stared at Jackson. “You play insubordinate now?”
“Are you trying out for the role of asshole, asshole?” Jackson shot back. “Shut up and turn on the TV.”
Stiles fingered the bandage beneath his gown. “What happened? How’d you… not die?” Jackson gave Stiles a look. There was anger and incredulity in that look. “Nobody died, right?” Stiles pressed.
“Nobody died,” Jackson snapped. “We didn’t do anything. Derek threw one of their own down into the pit and they kinda backed off after that. Pussies. Dude took one of the spikes through his neck and when they pulled him off of it - you could see his brains leaking out. The whole back of his head was just gone. Is that a thing we can regenerate?”
Stiles shrugged and hissed in a breath through his teeth. “I don’t know,” he groaned.
Jackson shrugged again. “So anyway, after that, they ran off. Probably to regroup. There was only five of them. And with me, Derek, Mccall and Lahey - we could nearly match them. ‘Course Lahey did us a fuck lot of good, getting taken out in the beginning like that.”
“They had it set up,” Stiles said thoughtfully. “They hit him with an arrow - wolfsbane, I assume - just so he would fall back into the pit. They let gravity do their work for them. That’s smart.”
“Then your dumbass jumped down there to cut him down,” Jackson filled in.
“Yeah,” Stiles agreed. “But they knew I wasn’t a werewolf.”
“How do you know?” Jackson asked.
“She used a knife to stab me,” Stiles said. “No wolfsbane. And she told me not to stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong,” he added, quieter, fingers drumming distractedly on his side.
“I bet you hear that a lot, Stilinski,” Jackson hummed disinterestedly.
Stiles shot him a look. “They fight like hunters,” he said, his gaze turning thoughtful. “Flashbombs, wolfsbane, pits dug into the forest. Why do you think that is?”
Jackson looked surprised that Stiles was even asking him a question - for his input. “Because they are hunters…?” He asked uncertainly. It wasn’t really an answer, it was more of a guess in a ‘what the fuck are you expecting to hear, Stilinski?’ kind of way. “Derek turned Allison’s mom right?” Stiles looked surprised that Jackson had even been lucid enough to know that. Jackson narrowed his eyes at him. “I know things, alright? Shut up. He turned her mom right? What if that’s what happened. Some smartass werewolf bit a hunter, made them deal with the shame of the bite. And instead of offing themselves like Allison’s mom - they took to it. Became an Alpha. Hunted werewolves. And started up a group of other hunters who wanted to be the best they could be - army strong.”
Stiles’s smile was brief. “Wait - what if Derek didn’t bite Allison’s mom - what if an Alpha did? One of these Alphas? What if that’s how they fill out their ranks?”
“That’s a lot of what ifs, Stilinski,” Jackson pointed out.
Stiles waved it away. “Dude - that’s how every great mystery of Beacon Hills starts. That’s how I found out about werewolves. How did you find out?”
“Mccall,” Jackson said pointedly. His head perked up, tilting slightly. It set Stiles on edge, because it reminded him of Derek - of Scott - when they listened to something out of his own hearing range. Jackson wasn’t looking at him anymore, his eyes were fixed on the door, as if he could see right through it.
“Jackson - what -”
“Shut up,” Jackson said, but there was no bite to it. There was an urgency, as Jackson stood up. And then the door opened and a woman stood there. Blonde. Tall. Built. And Stiles tensed. He saw her arm jerking forward, burying the knife in his gut all over again. But she just stood there, smiling.
Jackson moved forward and the woman held up a hand. “I told you to stay out of it,” she said, looking past Jackson, at Stiles.
“I haven’t done anything,” Stiles pointed out. He sounded breathless, almost desperate for the woman to get it - he hadn’t had the chance to stay away from it.
“Yet,” she said stiffly. “Yet. Little boy. I told you to stay out of it. Stop thinking. Stop talking. Shut up and mind your own business.”
“Is that what you said?” Stiles hedged, picking at his thin blanket. “Right before you stabbed me? Because that entire conversation is a little fuzzy. Probably shouldn’t have stabbed me. I hear that’s a side effect of -”
“Shut up, Stilinski,” Jackson hissed at him. If Jackson had fur, Stiles knew it would be standing on end, haunches raised.
The woman smiled. “Poor wolf,” she purred, moved forward. Jackson growled and Stiles started. The woman’s step didn’t even falter, until she was standing right in front of Jackson. She reached out and traced the nail of her index finger down his cheek. Jackson set his jaw. “So far out of your depth. Did your Alpha warn you about this? Did he prepare you?”
“I’m prepared,” Jackson said stiffly. More prepared than anyone. He still had the fight to survive. He still had the drive. More than soft spoken Isaac, more than AWOL Erica and Boyd. More than oblivious Mccall. He was better than them.
The woman’s nail elongated, the claw cutting deep into Jackson’s skin. But Jackson steeled his expression and didn’t react to it. It made the woman laugh and bring her claw to her mouth. She licked the blood off of her finger. “If you’re lucky, maybe we’ll even give you place among our ranks.”
“Unless you’re hunters,” Jackson said, voicing Stiles’s thoughts - thoughts he knew better than to voice.
The woman sighed, tutting. “I told you to stay out of it,“ she told Stiles, almost sadly. “You open your mouth and you put thoughts into their heads, thoughts they would have never considered before you. Thoughts you can’t take back now. It’s rude.”
Jackson was still standing between the woman and Stiles - like a self-appointed bodyguard. But it was all for show, because she was an Alpha. If she truly wanted, she could have removed Jackson. “How old are you?” Stiles asked. He could see a twitch in Jackson’s clenched jaw.
“Rude,” the woman continued. “I don’t intend to answer your questions. You’ll just construe the answers in ways I don’t intend you to.”
Jackson scoffed. The cut on his cheek hadn’t healed. One straight line of severed flesh from just beneath his right eye all the way down to his chin. “Just how smart do you think he is? You know he’s failing econ, right? He draws platypuses on essay questions. Trust me, he’s not that smart.”
Stiles opened his mouth, gawking. “The platypuses have speech bubbles, okay? They’re speech giving platypuses - platypie? - very rare and unique...so…”
Jackson laughed. “If this guy is your downfall, I will laugh at you. Loud. Obnoxious laughter. My laughter will follow you all the way to hell. We’re gonna put that on your tombstone - we’re going to cut you in half and bury you, and buy you a tombstone just to mock you on it.”
It was Stiles’s turn to laugh but the woman didn’t look amused. Her hand snapped out, claws slashing across - and through - Jackson’s throat. Jackson stumbled back, gurgling. He choked on blood, but what air he sucked in never made it past the gaping wound in his throat. Stiles sat up straighter in his bed, his entire body trembling with the exertion. “This is the last time,” the woman said, ignoring Jackson and staring at Stiles. Jackson fell back, hitting the ground hard, hands spasming around his throat. There was blood everywhere. God. So much blood. “Stay out of it - or the next throat I cut will be yours, and we’ll see how quickly you regenerate from that.”
Stiles heaved himself to his feet, and took a few steps toward Jackson. There was a tug and he tore off the heart monitor. He tore out the IV needle and dropped down beside Jackson - his own body too heavy and too eager to let gravity pull him to the ground. He pressed his hands to Jackson’s throat, and Jackson’s hands spasmed around his own. His hands trembled, grabbed for Stiles’s shoulder and clutched him hard enough to bruise - as if he needed something to grasp, to remind him that he wasn’t sinking through the floor. Jackson’s eyes were so wide - so terrified. Stiles pressed his hands harder against the wound. It was spurting blood. Jesus. Stiles had blood on his face.
This was how they killed Peter - what if Jackson couldn’t regenerate from it? He pressed harder. And he stayed like that forever. Until Jackson’s body stopped shaking beneath his. Until Jackson’s hand on his arm slackened. Until Jackson’s breathing slowed. He didn’t know when he’d started crying, or how long he had been on his knees, pressing down onto the boy’s throat, hunched over his body - shaking with sobs.
The door opened and he didn’t hear it. He jumped when the hand touched his shoulder. His head snapped up, tilting back to find Derek and then it was like a dam had broken. Whatever resolve Stiles had clung onto completely crumbled and he sobbed. “Derek - She - Fuck -”
Derek knelt down on Jackson’s other side and had to pry Stiles’s fingers off of his neck just to get the boy to let go. He smeared the blood on Jackson’s neck. “Stiles -”
“She fucking slashed his throat,” Stiles interrupted. “What are we going to do? He’s dead and my heart monitor - they’re going to know - they’re going to be here any second now and -”
“Stiles,” Derek said louder. He hooked a hand around the back of Stiles’s neck and jerked, until the boy’s head dropped and he stared down at Jackson. “You see that?” He smoothed the first few fingers of his other hand across Jackson’s neck. The skin was pink and raw. The gaping hole was still there, but the skin around the hole was pink - and knitting back together. “He’s healing.”
Stiles stared down at it, dumbstruck. He wiped his arm across his eyes, trying to clear up his vision but he did little more than smear blood across his face. “I don’t know understand,” he said. He sounded so lost, so confused. “I thought - Scott said - you can’t heal immediately from an Alpha cut. It shouldn’t be...” His throat was too thick with tears. He rubbed his fingers across Jackson’s neck, just to make sure he wasn’t see things.
“Alpha cuts don’t heal as quickly,” Derek agreed calmly. “But if they’re this severe - if you could die from them - our healing is triggered, no matter what.”
“He’s healing,” Stiles echoed, in sheer wonderment. His head hurt and his cheeks ached from crying.
“He’s healing,” Derek confirmed gently. His fingers rubbed circles into the base of Stiles’s neck. “He’s healing. It’s okay. No harm done.”
Stiles nodded, eyes stuck on Jackson’s neck. There was blood everywhere. How were they going to explain all of that? His arms were bloody, all the way up to his elbows and across his face - jesus. But the squirting had stopped at some point. Jackson had gone still, except for the fingers curled in Stiles’s gown - loose but still there. “Jesus,” he whispered, fingering the slowly shrinking wound in Jackson’s neck. “These Alphas are not fucking around.”
Derek tensed at the reminder. “What did they want this time?”
“It’s my fault,” Stiles said. “It’s all my fault. All of this. It was a warning. To stay out of it. To stop putting thoughts in your head. All of it.”
“So why’d they attack Jackson if they already delivered that message to you?” Derek pressed. His hand hadn’t left Stiles’s neck and Stiles liked it. A weighty reminder. Comforting.
“I can’t tell you that,” Stiles said quietly, desperately. “Me and Jackson were talking, kicking around theories and I think he struck too close to the truth. They seem clever but you don’t have to be a genius to know how to read a few books and use your own weakness against your enemy. If they hadn’t done anything, we would’ve dismissed the theory. It was too random, too perfect; not to mention none of the evidence really backed it up. It was just a hypothesis. But they attacked Jackson - which is the greatest thing they could have done - to back up our theory. They’re not smart. They’re just pretending.”
Stiles was talking fast. He was raw and emotional and hyped up on sorrow and adrenaline. Derek rubbed a few more circles into the back of his neck. “Alright,” he said at last. “Come on. We have to get you cleaned up. And we have to clean up this mess before anybody decides to check up on you.” He helped Stiles up and ushered him to the bathroom. “I’ll give Isaac a call. Tell him he has next shift. Jackson’ll need time to recuperate.”
Stiles nodded. He was too numb for this bullshit. It had been a long time - a very long time - since he’d felt such extreme emotion. Such grief. Such panic. He didn’t care enough to analyze why he cared that much for Jackson. Jackson was a kid he knew. Jackson was somebody. And Jackson had gotten cut down right in front of him. Because of him. “What about Scott?” He asked. Jackson could not have been his first choice.
Derek pushed him back against the sink in the bathroom. He swung the door shut and then turned on the shower. “Scott was here all night,” he said. “He’s here when your dad’s here. Everybody else gets the other shifts.”
“Wait,” Stiles said. “How long has it been? How long have I been out?”
“Three days,” Derek said, ushering Stiles toward the shower. “Shit, you tore your stitches.”
Stiles glanced down at his stomach. “How can you tell? It could be Jackson’s blood -” Derek tapped his nose. “-oh. Right. Super werewolf powers.”
Derek smiled, brief and grim. “Shower. I’ll clean everything up. I‘ll find you a new hospital gown.” Derek moved back, opening the door.
That really shouldn’t be as comforting as it was. It felt like a weight lifted off of his chest. “Derek?” Stiles asked, and Derek paused, halfway out of the door. “Thanks.”
Derek nodded once and then disappeared through the door, closing it behind him.
Author: Roz
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Depictions of graphic violence (violence canon to the violence in the show).
Summary: Jackson laughed. “If this guy is your downfall, I will laugh at you. Loud. Obnoxious laughter. My laughter will follow you all the way to hell. We’re gonna put that on your tombstone - we’re going to cut you in half and bury you, and buy you a tombstone just to mock you on it.”
Disclaimer: I do not own Teen wolf and I make no profit from this fictional depiction.
The first thing Stiles was aware of was the muted buzz of the machines. He knew exactly where he was before he even opened his eyes, from the whirl of machines - from the smell - alone. He was in a hospital. He hated hospitals. Stiles groaned, lifted a hand to rub his head and poked himself in the eye with the clunky heart monitor attached to his finger. “Fuck,” he groaned, lifting his other hand to rub his eye. “Shit.” His throat felt scraped raw.
He opened his eyes at the laughter; his eyelids felt like they had anchors attached to them, but he managed it. Jackson was slouched down in the chair beside the bed which was a mind fuck all on its own. Nobody could really explain why Jackson hadn’t died. Which was fine by Stiles - but it really fucked over the EMTs, who had jobs riding on that. You can’t just pronounce - he never really understood why the term was ‘pronounce’ instead of ‘announce’ but whatever - a kid dead and have that kid turn up to not really be dead.
“Smooth,” Jackson said, but his grin didn’t really leave his face.
“What are you doing here?” Stiles croaked. Jackson got up to give Stiles a glass of water. He reconsidered it, and then put a hand at the back of Stiles’s neck and helped him take several hungry gulps of water. Jackson sat the glass back down on the table beside the bed and Stiles sank back down against the pillow.
Jackson shrugged, once he was seated in his chair again. “We’re all taking shifts,” he answered.
“If they wanted me dead, they would’ve cut my throat - I don’t really think shifts are necessary,” Stiles said, lowering a hand to his stomach. Idly, he fingered the bandage. The wound beneath them felt raw, but it was a distant kind of raw, obviously from the drugs. They made him feel languid, like he was floating. It was nice but he hated it at the same time.
Jackson shrugged again. He didn’t look interested in the conversation at hand. “Hale doesn’t want you to die. I don’t know what you want me to do about it.”
Stiles stared at Jackson. “You play insubordinate now?”
“Are you trying out for the role of asshole, asshole?” Jackson shot back. “Shut up and turn on the TV.”
Stiles fingered the bandage beneath his gown. “What happened? How’d you… not die?” Jackson gave Stiles a look. There was anger and incredulity in that look. “Nobody died, right?” Stiles pressed.
“Nobody died,” Jackson snapped. “We didn’t do anything. Derek threw one of their own down into the pit and they kinda backed off after that. Pussies. Dude took one of the spikes through his neck and when they pulled him off of it - you could see his brains leaking out. The whole back of his head was just gone. Is that a thing we can regenerate?”
Stiles shrugged and hissed in a breath through his teeth. “I don’t know,” he groaned.
Jackson shrugged again. “So anyway, after that, they ran off. Probably to regroup. There was only five of them. And with me, Derek, Mccall and Lahey - we could nearly match them. ‘Course Lahey did us a fuck lot of good, getting taken out in the beginning like that.”
“They had it set up,” Stiles said thoughtfully. “They hit him with an arrow - wolfsbane, I assume - just so he would fall back into the pit. They let gravity do their work for them. That’s smart.”
“Then your dumbass jumped down there to cut him down,” Jackson filled in.
“Yeah,” Stiles agreed. “But they knew I wasn’t a werewolf.”
“How do you know?” Jackson asked.
“She used a knife to stab me,” Stiles said. “No wolfsbane. And she told me not to stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong,” he added, quieter, fingers drumming distractedly on his side.
“I bet you hear that a lot, Stilinski,” Jackson hummed disinterestedly.
Stiles shot him a look. “They fight like hunters,” he said, his gaze turning thoughtful. “Flashbombs, wolfsbane, pits dug into the forest. Why do you think that is?”
Jackson looked surprised that Stiles was even asking him a question - for his input. “Because they are hunters…?” He asked uncertainly. It wasn’t really an answer, it was more of a guess in a ‘what the fuck are you expecting to hear, Stilinski?’ kind of way. “Derek turned Allison’s mom right?” Stiles looked surprised that Jackson had even been lucid enough to know that. Jackson narrowed his eyes at him. “I know things, alright? Shut up. He turned her mom right? What if that’s what happened. Some smartass werewolf bit a hunter, made them deal with the shame of the bite. And instead of offing themselves like Allison’s mom - they took to it. Became an Alpha. Hunted werewolves. And started up a group of other hunters who wanted to be the best they could be - army strong.”
Stiles’s smile was brief. “Wait - what if Derek didn’t bite Allison’s mom - what if an Alpha did? One of these Alphas? What if that’s how they fill out their ranks?”
“That’s a lot of what ifs, Stilinski,” Jackson pointed out.
Stiles waved it away. “Dude - that’s how every great mystery of Beacon Hills starts. That’s how I found out about werewolves. How did you find out?”
“Mccall,” Jackson said pointedly. His head perked up, tilting slightly. It set Stiles on edge, because it reminded him of Derek - of Scott - when they listened to something out of his own hearing range. Jackson wasn’t looking at him anymore, his eyes were fixed on the door, as if he could see right through it.
“Jackson - what -”
“Shut up,” Jackson said, but there was no bite to it. There was an urgency, as Jackson stood up. And then the door opened and a woman stood there. Blonde. Tall. Built. And Stiles tensed. He saw her arm jerking forward, burying the knife in his gut all over again. But she just stood there, smiling.
Jackson moved forward and the woman held up a hand. “I told you to stay out of it,” she said, looking past Jackson, at Stiles.
“I haven’t done anything,” Stiles pointed out. He sounded breathless, almost desperate for the woman to get it - he hadn’t had the chance to stay away from it.
“Yet,” she said stiffly. “Yet. Little boy. I told you to stay out of it. Stop thinking. Stop talking. Shut up and mind your own business.”
“Is that what you said?” Stiles hedged, picking at his thin blanket. “Right before you stabbed me? Because that entire conversation is a little fuzzy. Probably shouldn’t have stabbed me. I hear that’s a side effect of -”
“Shut up, Stilinski,” Jackson hissed at him. If Jackson had fur, Stiles knew it would be standing on end, haunches raised.
The woman smiled. “Poor wolf,” she purred, moved forward. Jackson growled and Stiles started. The woman’s step didn’t even falter, until she was standing right in front of Jackson. She reached out and traced the nail of her index finger down his cheek. Jackson set his jaw. “So far out of your depth. Did your Alpha warn you about this? Did he prepare you?”
“I’m prepared,” Jackson said stiffly. More prepared than anyone. He still had the fight to survive. He still had the drive. More than soft spoken Isaac, more than AWOL Erica and Boyd. More than oblivious Mccall. He was better than them.
The woman’s nail elongated, the claw cutting deep into Jackson’s skin. But Jackson steeled his expression and didn’t react to it. It made the woman laugh and bring her claw to her mouth. She licked the blood off of her finger. “If you’re lucky, maybe we’ll even give you place among our ranks.”
“Unless you’re hunters,” Jackson said, voicing Stiles’s thoughts - thoughts he knew better than to voice.
The woman sighed, tutting. “I told you to stay out of it,“ she told Stiles, almost sadly. “You open your mouth and you put thoughts into their heads, thoughts they would have never considered before you. Thoughts you can’t take back now. It’s rude.”
Jackson was still standing between the woman and Stiles - like a self-appointed bodyguard. But it was all for show, because she was an Alpha. If she truly wanted, she could have removed Jackson. “How old are you?” Stiles asked. He could see a twitch in Jackson’s clenched jaw.
“Rude,” the woman continued. “I don’t intend to answer your questions. You’ll just construe the answers in ways I don’t intend you to.”
Jackson scoffed. The cut on his cheek hadn’t healed. One straight line of severed flesh from just beneath his right eye all the way down to his chin. “Just how smart do you think he is? You know he’s failing econ, right? He draws platypuses on essay questions. Trust me, he’s not that smart.”
Stiles opened his mouth, gawking. “The platypuses have speech bubbles, okay? They’re speech giving platypuses - platypie? - very rare and unique...so…”
Jackson laughed. “If this guy is your downfall, I will laugh at you. Loud. Obnoxious laughter. My laughter will follow you all the way to hell. We’re gonna put that on your tombstone - we’re going to cut you in half and bury you, and buy you a tombstone just to mock you on it.”
It was Stiles’s turn to laugh but the woman didn’t look amused. Her hand snapped out, claws slashing across - and through - Jackson’s throat. Jackson stumbled back, gurgling. He choked on blood, but what air he sucked in never made it past the gaping wound in his throat. Stiles sat up straighter in his bed, his entire body trembling with the exertion. “This is the last time,” the woman said, ignoring Jackson and staring at Stiles. Jackson fell back, hitting the ground hard, hands spasming around his throat. There was blood everywhere. God. So much blood. “Stay out of it - or the next throat I cut will be yours, and we’ll see how quickly you regenerate from that.”
Stiles heaved himself to his feet, and took a few steps toward Jackson. There was a tug and he tore off the heart monitor. He tore out the IV needle and dropped down beside Jackson - his own body too heavy and too eager to let gravity pull him to the ground. He pressed his hands to Jackson’s throat, and Jackson’s hands spasmed around his own. His hands trembled, grabbed for Stiles’s shoulder and clutched him hard enough to bruise - as if he needed something to grasp, to remind him that he wasn’t sinking through the floor. Jackson’s eyes were so wide - so terrified. Stiles pressed his hands harder against the wound. It was spurting blood. Jesus. Stiles had blood on his face.
This was how they killed Peter - what if Jackson couldn’t regenerate from it? He pressed harder. And he stayed like that forever. Until Jackson’s body stopped shaking beneath his. Until Jackson’s hand on his arm slackened. Until Jackson’s breathing slowed. He didn’t know when he’d started crying, or how long he had been on his knees, pressing down onto the boy’s throat, hunched over his body - shaking with sobs.
The door opened and he didn’t hear it. He jumped when the hand touched his shoulder. His head snapped up, tilting back to find Derek and then it was like a dam had broken. Whatever resolve Stiles had clung onto completely crumbled and he sobbed. “Derek - She - Fuck -”
Derek knelt down on Jackson’s other side and had to pry Stiles’s fingers off of his neck just to get the boy to let go. He smeared the blood on Jackson’s neck. “Stiles -”
“She fucking slashed his throat,” Stiles interrupted. “What are we going to do? He’s dead and my heart monitor - they’re going to know - they’re going to be here any second now and -”
“Stiles,” Derek said louder. He hooked a hand around the back of Stiles’s neck and jerked, until the boy’s head dropped and he stared down at Jackson. “You see that?” He smoothed the first few fingers of his other hand across Jackson’s neck. The skin was pink and raw. The gaping hole was still there, but the skin around the hole was pink - and knitting back together. “He’s healing.”
Stiles stared down at it, dumbstruck. He wiped his arm across his eyes, trying to clear up his vision but he did little more than smear blood across his face. “I don’t know understand,” he said. He sounded so lost, so confused. “I thought - Scott said - you can’t heal immediately from an Alpha cut. It shouldn’t be...” His throat was too thick with tears. He rubbed his fingers across Jackson’s neck, just to make sure he wasn’t see things.
“Alpha cuts don’t heal as quickly,” Derek agreed calmly. “But if they’re this severe - if you could die from them - our healing is triggered, no matter what.”
“He’s healing,” Stiles echoed, in sheer wonderment. His head hurt and his cheeks ached from crying.
“He’s healing,” Derek confirmed gently. His fingers rubbed circles into the base of Stiles’s neck. “He’s healing. It’s okay. No harm done.”
Stiles nodded, eyes stuck on Jackson’s neck. There was blood everywhere. How were they going to explain all of that? His arms were bloody, all the way up to his elbows and across his face - jesus. But the squirting had stopped at some point. Jackson had gone still, except for the fingers curled in Stiles’s gown - loose but still there. “Jesus,” he whispered, fingering the slowly shrinking wound in Jackson’s neck. “These Alphas are not fucking around.”
Derek tensed at the reminder. “What did they want this time?”
“It’s my fault,” Stiles said. “It’s all my fault. All of this. It was a warning. To stay out of it. To stop putting thoughts in your head. All of it.”
“So why’d they attack Jackson if they already delivered that message to you?” Derek pressed. His hand hadn’t left Stiles’s neck and Stiles liked it. A weighty reminder. Comforting.
“I can’t tell you that,” Stiles said quietly, desperately. “Me and Jackson were talking, kicking around theories and I think he struck too close to the truth. They seem clever but you don’t have to be a genius to know how to read a few books and use your own weakness against your enemy. If they hadn’t done anything, we would’ve dismissed the theory. It was too random, too perfect; not to mention none of the evidence really backed it up. It was just a hypothesis. But they attacked Jackson - which is the greatest thing they could have done - to back up our theory. They’re not smart. They’re just pretending.”
Stiles was talking fast. He was raw and emotional and hyped up on sorrow and adrenaline. Derek rubbed a few more circles into the back of his neck. “Alright,” he said at last. “Come on. We have to get you cleaned up. And we have to clean up this mess before anybody decides to check up on you.” He helped Stiles up and ushered him to the bathroom. “I’ll give Isaac a call. Tell him he has next shift. Jackson’ll need time to recuperate.”
Stiles nodded. He was too numb for this bullshit. It had been a long time - a very long time - since he’d felt such extreme emotion. Such grief. Such panic. He didn’t care enough to analyze why he cared that much for Jackson. Jackson was a kid he knew. Jackson was somebody. And Jackson had gotten cut down right in front of him. Because of him. “What about Scott?” He asked. Jackson could not have been his first choice.
Derek pushed him back against the sink in the bathroom. He swung the door shut and then turned on the shower. “Scott was here all night,” he said. “He’s here when your dad’s here. Everybody else gets the other shifts.”
“Wait,” Stiles said. “How long has it been? How long have I been out?”
“Three days,” Derek said, ushering Stiles toward the shower. “Shit, you tore your stitches.”
Stiles glanced down at his stomach. “How can you tell? It could be Jackson’s blood -” Derek tapped his nose. “-oh. Right. Super werewolf powers.”
Derek smiled, brief and grim. “Shower. I’ll clean everything up. I‘ll find you a new hospital gown.” Derek moved back, opening the door.
That really shouldn’t be as comforting as it was. It felt like a weight lifted off of his chest. “Derek?” Stiles asked, and Derek paused, halfway out of the door. “Thanks.”
Derek nodded once and then disappeared through the door, closing it behind him.