FIC: Intangibles 5/? l Mature l Stiles Stilinski and Derek Hale l Teen Wolf
Title: Equilibrium
Author: Roz
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Warnings: Discussion of graphic depictions of violence; the fall out from a traumatic event.
Rating: Mature
Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Wolf and I stand to make no profit from it I am not E.L. James, after all
Summary: The rest of the time he threw himself into research. He researched everything.
When Stiles left his bathroom, Jackson was gone. The blood was gone. Derek had left a gown in the bathroom while he was in the shower, but Derek was gone now too. The room looked untouched. A nurse chose that time to poke her head into the room and Stiles barely got out the ‘had to pee’ because his chest felt so tight.
He returned to his bed, and spent the next week expecting Derek to return to tell him that it was a false alarm - that Jackson had died after all. He spent the week expecting another Alpha to show up to kill him, because killing him would silence him far better than any threat. He spent the week deathly silent, too scared to say a word. Too scared to open his mouth and gasp in a breathe. His lungs burned, like they were full of water, like he was sinking deeper, like he couldn’t even look up and see the surface anymore.
Every night he slept, he woke up screaming, and spent the entire rest of the day silent. Finally, after the first few days, his doctor advised he move around - take small walks, work up his strength, get out of the hospital bed - but it was all done in silence. Talking was what had gotten him into this position and he wanted out of it. At some point Scott brought his computer, as if he knew Stiles was going stir crazy - should be going stir crazy. Stiles didn’t touch it. He didn’t play tetris to occupy his mind, he didn’t do research. He didn’t touch it. He laid in the bed, he slept, he screamed, he ate whatever they put in front of him, and he didn’t talk.
One night, he woke up to find his doctor and his father discussing his condition. The knife had missed his vital organs. The cut had been jagged, as if someone had jerked the knife. It would scar and no amount of surgery would be able to prevent that. Of course Stiles had the option to get plastic surgery, but his father shook his head and scratched back over his head and muttered ‘Stiles wouldn’t want that.’ All that money on something as shallow and vain as scar prevention - Stiles wouldn’t want that.
Stiles blinked and took in his father. He looked tired. Exhausted. He looked like he had no right to even been capable of standing right now. His shoulders sagged, and his entire body seemed to be desperately fighting the lure of gravity. And losing.
The doctor went on to talk about how Stiles’s muteness might correlate with his own personal trauma. Post Traumatic Stress was what the doctor supposed. It should pass given time - given possible therapy. It should pass. Stiles could be discharged at the end of the week, if his stats remained positive. The doctor gave his father a card - the phone number to the therapist he advised Stiles be submitted to, before he ducked out of the room. Stiles closed his eyes again as his father sat back down into the chair.
He fell asleep before his father left. He wished he’d fallen asleep before his father started to cry.
-------
“Stiles.” Scott snapped his fingers in front of Stiles’s face. Stiles blinked. He must’ve spaced out. The days were beginning to merge into one blur. His gaze refocused, this time on Scott.
“He hasn’t said anything,” Erica said.
Stiles’s head snapped around to look at her. When the hell had she gotten here? He could have sworn he’d been awake the entire time - but he hadn’t noticed her entrance. He didn’t even know what had happened to her - her return - any of it. Questions swam in his eyes when he fixed them back on Scott, but Scott read his expression easily.
“A message,” Scott answered. “Derek started receiving pieces of them - Erica and Boyd - the day after the Alpha paid you a visit. They were trying to draw him out.” Stiles’s eyes snapped back over Erica, looking her over, but he couldn’t find any missing pieces. “Werewolves regenerate severed limbs, evidently,” Scott said, sounding a lot like he was reciting something he was told. “It served no purpose, they were just being dicks about it. So Derek went after them. He lost.”
Stiles’s eyes widened at that. Was Derek - did that mean he was dead? How fucking long had it been? Erica laughed, low and mirthless. “He didn’t die, dweeb,” she said. “He got his ass kicked. We all did.”
If Stiles had been talking, he would’ve echoed the ‘we’. And maybe Scott was better at this than he realized, because Scott answered that unvoiced question too. It was easy to forget how many times Scott had visited him - forced to carry the weight of this one sided conversation Stiles pushed onto him. “Omegas don’t usually return to their pack. The Alphas gave them a choice. Again - just because their dicks. Massive dicks. Big, floppy dicks. Dicks. They told Erica and Boyd they could join them. Help them kill Alphas, become Alphas themselves. No running. No pain. As they cut off... you know... stuff. And mailed them to Derek. No running. No pain. They both turned them down. It’s about loyalty and they stayed loyal. So when Derek went after them - they stayed loyal.”
Scott sat down on the edge of his bed. “And god - we got our asses kicked. They had all these booby traps - like Argent’s. But more sadistic. It wasn’t about trapping us, it was about hurting us. Pain makes you stay human, you remember?”
Stiles might have nodded, but he couldn’t really remember moving. He tilted his head back against his pillow, tired. “But we had a plan B. Inspired by you.” Stiles shook his head, not comprehending. “Jackson told us about your theory. That the Alphas are hunters? So we went to Argent. If anybody knows hunters - it’s him. He wouldn’t tell us his secrets though. Figures. And Allison…” He shook his head. “She wouldn’t even touch this.” There was a soft, raw kind of sadness to his voice. “But while we were getting our asses handed to us, Argent set them free. They escaped. We escaped.”
“It’s a win,” Erica said. Stiles fingered his bandaged distractedly. Some fucking win.
Scott weakly punched his shoulder, forcing him to return his attention to Scott. “It’s a win,” he echoed Erica’s sentiment. “And you get out of here tomorrow. And we can…” Scott floundered for the words. They could what? Stiles hadn’t said a word in a week. Stiles had gotten stabbed. Stiles went into surgery - he had a blood transfusion - he could have died without it. Stiles watched another sixteen year old boy bleed out in front of him. Stiles.
“I don’t know what to do, man,” he said quietly, fingers tightening on Stiles’s shoulder. “And you’re usually the one there telling me what to do, and you’re not there and I don’t know what to do.” Scott sounded as helpless as he felt. He sounded like he was on uneven ground, like the floor beneath him was breaking right under his feet and he was just barely managing to stay standing.
Stiles swallowed hard and opened his mouth. He needed to say something. He wanted to. He wanted to so badly but the words failed him. Nothing came. He reached out for Scott, tangled a hand in the back of his shirt and tugged him into a clumsy hug. Scott hugged him hard - so hard his bones ached - and it felt great. It felt real.
Stiles held out a hand in Erica’s direction. He waved it impatiently when she didn’t move. Erica rose up and sat on the edge of the bed beside Scott. Somehow, it turned into a group hug; the three of them clinging to each other as if their life depended on it.
“We’re going to kill them,” Erica said, speaking against the crook of Stiles’s neck. Her breath tickled across his skin and distantly he realized that this was the closest a female had ever been to him, but there was nothing sexual about it - about this. It was comfort. That was all it was. “We will. We’re going to kill them for what they did. We’re going to kill them for us, and for you, and for every other person they touched. No one will ever silence you again, Stiles. No one will ever silence any of us again.”
Stiles’s arm tightened around Erica’s waist and he nodded distantly, but the words burrowed their way into his skin and lived there - multiplying. Procreating. Festering. Eating away at him like a cancerous growth. Spreading. Blackening parts of him. They were going to find a way to kill this pack. And they were not going to be too kind about it. This was going to be a war, a blood bath.
---------
Stiles was taken home. He stayed in his room for three days, leaving it only for bathroom breaks and the rare moments that his father dragged him down to dinner, but he didn’t talk. The rest of the time he threw himself into research. He researched everything. He emailed Argent about advice, because emailing was easier than calling. It was a genuine surprise when Argent answered his email with short and to the point answers. The man more or less adequately answered his question, leaving out as much of the answer as he possibly could without the answers turning into meaningless statements. They helped. Stiles added them to his notebook. He added a lot of things to his notebook.
He made a list of what he knew. He knew the Alphas used the tools of a hunter. Pits dug into the ground and full of stakes - letting gravity do their work for them so that they could reserve their strength - just like a human might need to. They used arrows and flashbombs and wolfsbane - once more letting weapons do their work for them, as if they didn’t have claws of their own; strength of their own. He knew that the woman had attacked Jackson because they were talking about the possibility of the alphas being hunters. That was the most important piece he had. There were a lot of assumptions he could make based on it, and it was the reason he emailed Argent in the first place.
They passed back and forth half a dozen emails, each answer of Argent’s widening the doorway for more questions. He could easily adapt what he knew about hunters to these alphas and presume it was fact. It didn’t take into account the drastic changes these alphas must have undergone - physically and mentally - since they were bitten, but he could deal with that later.
He texted Scott the second day and asked for a detailed account of the booby traps the alphas had used and then looked them up on his computer. He filled out the notebook with step by step instructions, drawing diagrams into his book, listing tips and advice; easier, more mundane ways to assemble the booby traps.
He broke out the wolfsbane and got to work. He spent three days locked in his room. When Derek came to his window, he didn’t unlock it. Never again would anyone sneak into his room without his permission. Never again would anyone ever compromise his own sense of safety. Never again would he ever feel that helpless. Derek probably could have gone to the front door, and his dad would have let him in, but Derek didn’t.
And on the fourth day, he went to Derek’s. He tossed his notebook down onto a table that was missing a leg. Derek had stacked a bunch of books beneath it, to act as its surrogate leg. “This is what we’re going to do,” he said and it came out a little scratchier than he had predicted it might have. His throat hurt.
They were all looking at him. Standing there and staring. Scott’s lips had already started to quirk up into a full out grin. “Yes,” Scott said. He punched Derek’s arm, and hugged Stiles - hard - and shouted, “Yes!”
Stiles couldn’t help but smile too. Derek crossed his arms over his chest. Isaac punched Stiles in the arm while simultaneously high-fiving Scott. “You haven’t even heard my plan,” Stiles said over their shouting.
Scott sobered reluctantly. “Oh yeah. Your plans do usually involve a complicated mixture of stupidity and suicidal tendencies. And they usually fail.”
“Ha. Ha. Shut up,” Stiles said dryly. He rubbed a hand back over his head. “I can take my shit and go back to my room dude.” He gathered up his notebook as if that was exactly what he intended to do.
Scott caught his arm. “No, no,” he said quickly. “Just tell us your plan.”
Stiles’s gaze grazed over the room. He had all of their attention. He stopped abruptly on Jackson. Jackson had been there the entire time, but he was hanging back, behind them. There were three red lines across his throat - the skin around them healed, but the lines reluctant to do so. They were a shining beacon of exactly what this entire effort might cost them. These were werewolves that could cut them - cut them so deep, they wouldn’t be able to heal fast enough. The mark on Jackson’s face, from just beneath his eye to his chin, was in the same stages of healing as the lines on his neck. It had been a week and a half, and Jackson still hadn’t healed. Stiles’s face hardened, his resolve solidifying.
His eyes settled on Derek, waiting. Derek gave a slight, imperceptible nod of permission and Stiles flipped open his notebook. “Okay. This is what we’re going to do."
Author: Roz
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Warnings: Discussion of graphic depictions of violence; the fall out from a traumatic event.
Rating: Mature
Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Wolf and I stand to make no profit from it I am not E.L. James, after all
Summary: The rest of the time he threw himself into research. He researched everything.
When Stiles left his bathroom, Jackson was gone. The blood was gone. Derek had left a gown in the bathroom while he was in the shower, but Derek was gone now too. The room looked untouched. A nurse chose that time to poke her head into the room and Stiles barely got out the ‘had to pee’ because his chest felt so tight.
He returned to his bed, and spent the next week expecting Derek to return to tell him that it was a false alarm - that Jackson had died after all. He spent the week expecting another Alpha to show up to kill him, because killing him would silence him far better than any threat. He spent the week deathly silent, too scared to say a word. Too scared to open his mouth and gasp in a breathe. His lungs burned, like they were full of water, like he was sinking deeper, like he couldn’t even look up and see the surface anymore.
Every night he slept, he woke up screaming, and spent the entire rest of the day silent. Finally, after the first few days, his doctor advised he move around - take small walks, work up his strength, get out of the hospital bed - but it was all done in silence. Talking was what had gotten him into this position and he wanted out of it. At some point Scott brought his computer, as if he knew Stiles was going stir crazy - should be going stir crazy. Stiles didn’t touch it. He didn’t play tetris to occupy his mind, he didn’t do research. He didn’t touch it. He laid in the bed, he slept, he screamed, he ate whatever they put in front of him, and he didn’t talk.
One night, he woke up to find his doctor and his father discussing his condition. The knife had missed his vital organs. The cut had been jagged, as if someone had jerked the knife. It would scar and no amount of surgery would be able to prevent that. Of course Stiles had the option to get plastic surgery, but his father shook his head and scratched back over his head and muttered ‘Stiles wouldn’t want that.’ All that money on something as shallow and vain as scar prevention - Stiles wouldn’t want that.
Stiles blinked and took in his father. He looked tired. Exhausted. He looked like he had no right to even been capable of standing right now. His shoulders sagged, and his entire body seemed to be desperately fighting the lure of gravity. And losing.
The doctor went on to talk about how Stiles’s muteness might correlate with his own personal trauma. Post Traumatic Stress was what the doctor supposed. It should pass given time - given possible therapy. It should pass. Stiles could be discharged at the end of the week, if his stats remained positive. The doctor gave his father a card - the phone number to the therapist he advised Stiles be submitted to, before he ducked out of the room. Stiles closed his eyes again as his father sat back down into the chair.
He fell asleep before his father left. He wished he’d fallen asleep before his father started to cry.
-------
“Stiles.” Scott snapped his fingers in front of Stiles’s face. Stiles blinked. He must’ve spaced out. The days were beginning to merge into one blur. His gaze refocused, this time on Scott.
“He hasn’t said anything,” Erica said.
Stiles’s head snapped around to look at her. When the hell had she gotten here? He could have sworn he’d been awake the entire time - but he hadn’t noticed her entrance. He didn’t even know what had happened to her - her return - any of it. Questions swam in his eyes when he fixed them back on Scott, but Scott read his expression easily.
“A message,” Scott answered. “Derek started receiving pieces of them - Erica and Boyd - the day after the Alpha paid you a visit. They were trying to draw him out.” Stiles’s eyes snapped back over Erica, looking her over, but he couldn’t find any missing pieces. “Werewolves regenerate severed limbs, evidently,” Scott said, sounding a lot like he was reciting something he was told. “It served no purpose, they were just being dicks about it. So Derek went after them. He lost.”
Stiles’s eyes widened at that. Was Derek - did that mean he was dead? How fucking long had it been? Erica laughed, low and mirthless. “He didn’t die, dweeb,” she said. “He got his ass kicked. We all did.”
If Stiles had been talking, he would’ve echoed the ‘we’. And maybe Scott was better at this than he realized, because Scott answered that unvoiced question too. It was easy to forget how many times Scott had visited him - forced to carry the weight of this one sided conversation Stiles pushed onto him. “Omegas don’t usually return to their pack. The Alphas gave them a choice. Again - just because their dicks. Massive dicks. Big, floppy dicks. Dicks. They told Erica and Boyd they could join them. Help them kill Alphas, become Alphas themselves. No running. No pain. As they cut off... you know... stuff. And mailed them to Derek. No running. No pain. They both turned them down. It’s about loyalty and they stayed loyal. So when Derek went after them - they stayed loyal.”
Scott sat down on the edge of his bed. “And god - we got our asses kicked. They had all these booby traps - like Argent’s. But more sadistic. It wasn’t about trapping us, it was about hurting us. Pain makes you stay human, you remember?”
Stiles might have nodded, but he couldn’t really remember moving. He tilted his head back against his pillow, tired. “But we had a plan B. Inspired by you.” Stiles shook his head, not comprehending. “Jackson told us about your theory. That the Alphas are hunters? So we went to Argent. If anybody knows hunters - it’s him. He wouldn’t tell us his secrets though. Figures. And Allison…” He shook his head. “She wouldn’t even touch this.” There was a soft, raw kind of sadness to his voice. “But while we were getting our asses handed to us, Argent set them free. They escaped. We escaped.”
“It’s a win,” Erica said. Stiles fingered his bandaged distractedly. Some fucking win.
Scott weakly punched his shoulder, forcing him to return his attention to Scott. “It’s a win,” he echoed Erica’s sentiment. “And you get out of here tomorrow. And we can…” Scott floundered for the words. They could what? Stiles hadn’t said a word in a week. Stiles had gotten stabbed. Stiles went into surgery - he had a blood transfusion - he could have died without it. Stiles watched another sixteen year old boy bleed out in front of him. Stiles.
“I don’t know what to do, man,” he said quietly, fingers tightening on Stiles’s shoulder. “And you’re usually the one there telling me what to do, and you’re not there and I don’t know what to do.” Scott sounded as helpless as he felt. He sounded like he was on uneven ground, like the floor beneath him was breaking right under his feet and he was just barely managing to stay standing.
Stiles swallowed hard and opened his mouth. He needed to say something. He wanted to. He wanted to so badly but the words failed him. Nothing came. He reached out for Scott, tangled a hand in the back of his shirt and tugged him into a clumsy hug. Scott hugged him hard - so hard his bones ached - and it felt great. It felt real.
Stiles held out a hand in Erica’s direction. He waved it impatiently when she didn’t move. Erica rose up and sat on the edge of the bed beside Scott. Somehow, it turned into a group hug; the three of them clinging to each other as if their life depended on it.
“We’re going to kill them,” Erica said, speaking against the crook of Stiles’s neck. Her breath tickled across his skin and distantly he realized that this was the closest a female had ever been to him, but there was nothing sexual about it - about this. It was comfort. That was all it was. “We will. We’re going to kill them for what they did. We’re going to kill them for us, and for you, and for every other person they touched. No one will ever silence you again, Stiles. No one will ever silence any of us again.”
Stiles’s arm tightened around Erica’s waist and he nodded distantly, but the words burrowed their way into his skin and lived there - multiplying. Procreating. Festering. Eating away at him like a cancerous growth. Spreading. Blackening parts of him. They were going to find a way to kill this pack. And they were not going to be too kind about it. This was going to be a war, a blood bath.
---------
Stiles was taken home. He stayed in his room for three days, leaving it only for bathroom breaks and the rare moments that his father dragged him down to dinner, but he didn’t talk. The rest of the time he threw himself into research. He researched everything. He emailed Argent about advice, because emailing was easier than calling. It was a genuine surprise when Argent answered his email with short and to the point answers. The man more or less adequately answered his question, leaving out as much of the answer as he possibly could without the answers turning into meaningless statements. They helped. Stiles added them to his notebook. He added a lot of things to his notebook.
He made a list of what he knew. He knew the Alphas used the tools of a hunter. Pits dug into the ground and full of stakes - letting gravity do their work for them so that they could reserve their strength - just like a human might need to. They used arrows and flashbombs and wolfsbane - once more letting weapons do their work for them, as if they didn’t have claws of their own; strength of their own. He knew that the woman had attacked Jackson because they were talking about the possibility of the alphas being hunters. That was the most important piece he had. There were a lot of assumptions he could make based on it, and it was the reason he emailed Argent in the first place.
They passed back and forth half a dozen emails, each answer of Argent’s widening the doorway for more questions. He could easily adapt what he knew about hunters to these alphas and presume it was fact. It didn’t take into account the drastic changes these alphas must have undergone - physically and mentally - since they were bitten, but he could deal with that later.
He texted Scott the second day and asked for a detailed account of the booby traps the alphas had used and then looked them up on his computer. He filled out the notebook with step by step instructions, drawing diagrams into his book, listing tips and advice; easier, more mundane ways to assemble the booby traps.
He broke out the wolfsbane and got to work. He spent three days locked in his room. When Derek came to his window, he didn’t unlock it. Never again would anyone sneak into his room without his permission. Never again would anyone ever compromise his own sense of safety. Never again would he ever feel that helpless. Derek probably could have gone to the front door, and his dad would have let him in, but Derek didn’t.
And on the fourth day, he went to Derek’s. He tossed his notebook down onto a table that was missing a leg. Derek had stacked a bunch of books beneath it, to act as its surrogate leg. “This is what we’re going to do,” he said and it came out a little scratchier than he had predicted it might have. His throat hurt.
They were all looking at him. Standing there and staring. Scott’s lips had already started to quirk up into a full out grin. “Yes,” Scott said. He punched Derek’s arm, and hugged Stiles - hard - and shouted, “Yes!”
Stiles couldn’t help but smile too. Derek crossed his arms over his chest. Isaac punched Stiles in the arm while simultaneously high-fiving Scott. “You haven’t even heard my plan,” Stiles said over their shouting.
Scott sobered reluctantly. “Oh yeah. Your plans do usually involve a complicated mixture of stupidity and suicidal tendencies. And they usually fail.”
“Ha. Ha. Shut up,” Stiles said dryly. He rubbed a hand back over his head. “I can take my shit and go back to my room dude.” He gathered up his notebook as if that was exactly what he intended to do.
Scott caught his arm. “No, no,” he said quickly. “Just tell us your plan.”
Stiles’s gaze grazed over the room. He had all of their attention. He stopped abruptly on Jackson. Jackson had been there the entire time, but he was hanging back, behind them. There were three red lines across his throat - the skin around them healed, but the lines reluctant to do so. They were a shining beacon of exactly what this entire effort might cost them. These were werewolves that could cut them - cut them so deep, they wouldn’t be able to heal fast enough. The mark on Jackson’s face, from just beneath his eye to his chin, was in the same stages of healing as the lines on his neck. It had been a week and a half, and Jackson still hadn’t healed. Stiles’s face hardened, his resolve solidifying.
His eyes settled on Derek, waiting. Derek gave a slight, imperceptible nod of permission and Stiles flipped open his notebook. “Okay. This is what we’re going to do."