seek not to alter, part 1 (gift for chase_acow)
Title: seek not to alter
Author: sarahsan
Recipient: chase_acow
Pairings: Stiles/Derek
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 14,763
Warnings: None
Summary: With the last of the pack cornered and things looking grim, Stiles unknowingly makes a wish the universe can't refuse.
Author's Notes: Well, this was supposed to be about five thousand words long and mostly shippy. It came out about fifteen thousand words long and mostly character-study-y. This is what happens when I'm left in charge of something. All my thanks to lirren, who both provided me with the original prompt that spawned the fic and betaed/cheerled me on to victory! All mistakes are my own. Title from Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing. Happy holidays, chase_acow! I hope you have a fabulous season, and I TRULY apologize for the inexcusable dearth of porn! D:
Stiles spat blood from his mouth, his jaw and tongue hurting to do it. Hell, everything on his face hurt, everything on his body hurt, and he was feeling pretty bad about his prospects of ever walking again on his crushed right foot. He supposed he should be grateful that he wasn’t planning on running anymore anytime soon; where he and Derek and Isaac had holed up last week in the old train station (because the universe was an ironic son of a bitch), they pretty much either had to hold out or. Well. Not.
Isaac slid a hand, too-tight, around Stiles’ knee, but the pain only blossomed there for a moment and then was blissfully gone. Stiles shot him a grateful look and released the empty magazine from his gun, hands sure while his stomach flipped. He still hated guns. He’d always hated guns. That’d been sort of his mom’s doing. The steadiness of his fingers while he loaded in a new clip, he’d gotten from his dad. “Thanks, man,” he muttered, slurring a little around the pain in his face. Stiles was lucky still to be breathing after that last grenade blast. He’d been way too close. But it was kind of hard to feel lucky when you’d violently lost three teeth. Isaac whimpered a little under his breath, the sound trapped in his chest, and Stiles reached out, curled his hand over Isaac’s nape and gave him a squeeze that was meant to reassure. Isaac looked up at him, face wan and very white compared to their dim surroundings and Isaac’s grimy clothes. The hunters had cut the water to the station three days ago, and they all three looked and smelled pretty gamy by this point.
Stiles would’ve given his other foot to catch a glimpse of Derek’s filthy face, right now.
“He’ll be back soon,” Isaac said, but he sounded an awful lot like he was trying to convince himself. He looked and sounded even more frightened about Derek’s absence than Stiles was, but Stiles couldn’t even hold it against him. He and Derek might be mates, but Derek was Isaac’s alpha, and Isaac had taken Erica’s and Scott’s deaths hardest of all of them, watching the new family he’d painstakingly collected over the last two years ripped away from him, just when he was starting to forget the first family he’d had taken away from him. Stiles had simply felt it all as rage, turning his mourning into fury; Isaac looked more every day like the experience was turning him into a ghost.
Stiles nodded, couldn’t not try to comfort him. Isaac was very effectively comforting Stiles right now, after all, by sucking out the fiery pain til it was barely more than a niggling throbbing ache. Stiles’ mangled foot may as well be a sprained ankle for all he felt it, and he knew Isaac liked to be useful. Stiles rubbed his thumb along the contoured handgrip of his dad’s old service pistol, presumed by the BCPD to have been lost at the scene of his death. There were a lot of things they’d been forced to assume about the way Sheriff Stilinski died - and Stiles was pretty sure their assumptions had not included supernatural creatures of any kind - but Stiles was just glad he’d been there at the time, been with his dad. He was also pretty glad Dad hadn’t had to be here for all the shit that had gone down since. He’d be pissed if he knew some of the risks Stiles had been taking lately.
“Yeah, he’ll be back. He just went to check the booby traps on the doors so we don’t have an encore performance of…” He gestured to his bloodied foot, and Isaac made another helpless sound. “He’s fine. He knows better than to--“
“I’m here,” Derek said, and Stiles and Isaac both visibly slumped in relief. “And yes. I know better than to try to go back out again. They’re obviously not in a bargaining mood.”
“Derek, we can’t stay here,” Isaac said, soft and careful, making sure to keep his eyes lowered as he did so he wouldn’t sound as blatantly challenging. Stiles gave his nape another squeeze and stifled his automatic eyeroll; none of the other betas had much gone in for all that pack heirarchy stuff, but Isaac had seemed primed for it. Probably a holdover from living with his dad, a thought that Stiles had shared with Scott once and which had made Scott almost glue himself to Isaac’s side for a week. Stiles remembered this one time that Scott had--
No, he couldn’t…he couldn’t right now. Stiles had not yet properly mourned his best friend, and he couldn’t very well start now, with a dozen hunters set up outside the doors of their makeshift fortress. Those hunters had Scott’s, and Allison’s, and Erica’s, and Boyd’s, and Mrs. McCall’s blood on their hands; they’d taken what the other werewolves and the chimaera and the witches and the wendigo had not, could not. Looking up at Derek from his position sprawled on the floor and propped up on a support column, Stiles could see every member of their lost pack writ stark and ugly in Derek’s stony, frightening face. Stiles swallowed reflexively; he loved Derek, but the prey part of his psyche was still alive and kicking, and prone to making an appearance when Derek looked like that.
It was only when Stiles registered the low, furious growl in Derek’s throat that he realized Derek was looking like that because of him. “What?” Stiles asked, but he had a feeling he already knew. They couldn’t stay here, Isaac had said, because they needed to get to the hospital. Because they needed to get Stiles to the hospital. Because if they didn’t, there probably wouldn’t be a Stiles for very much longer.
The thought tightened up Stiles’ throat, made his heart race, which, of course, somehow managed to hurt. Isaac’s eyes went back to Stiles and he tightened his fingers around Stiles’ knee again, trying to soothe, trying to calm. Stiles refocused his eyes on Derek’s, red and luminous in the low light, and told himself very distinctly not to panic. Not now, not about this.
“Are the doors secure?” Stiles asked him in a flat voice. Derek blinked once and the moment passed; he folded his bulk up next to Stiles in a crouch, nodding his head.
“Yes. They’re not getting back in that way. And it looks like they haven’t tried the roof again, either.”
Stiles snorted, then winced and wished he hadn’t done that. There was definitely a rib somewhere a rib was not supposed to be. “Yeah well. Fifty thousand volts straight to the nipples’ll do that to you.”
Isaac burst out laughing at that, startling all three of them, though Derek mostly just looked confused and a little wounded in his Clueless Alpha Werewolf way. Stiles grinned at Isaac - the joke had been mostly for him, anyway - as Isaac shook his head.
“You’ve been saving that up for weeks, haven’t you?” he asked Stiles. Stiles only grinned bigger.
“Fuck yes I have. Knew it’d pay off eventually.” He licked at his lips, pulling a face at the renewed metallic tang of blood. “Ugh. Go get me some water, will you?” he asked.
“I’ll go,” Derek said, immediately standing. “Isaac should stay and--“
“I’ll be okay for the two minutes it’ll take him to grab me a bottle from inside,” Stiles said, making a shooing motion with his hand. “You. Sit your ass back down. Take a break for a minute.”
Isaac and Derek traded a look, then Derek nodded almost imperceptibly and sat his ass back down. Isaac gave Stiles a tight smile and a last press of his fingers, draining out that last bit of pain before he straightened and went to go get them some water.
Stiles sighed softly after a moment, reaching out to poke Derek in the shin. “How ya holdin’ up, boss?”
Derek’s mouth did something complicated at Stiles’ unconsciously using Boyd’s old pet name for Derek. “Fine,” he said gruffly, which was at least two-thirds a lie and not even that well-veiled. “Isaac’s right. We’ve got to get you out of here.”
“Yeah,” Stiles said ruefully. “Unfortunately, getting me out of here would necessitate one or both of you taking yourselves out of here, too, and I’m pretty sure they have plans to open fire if one of us so much as pops our head out again for a breath of fresh air.”
Derek’s already-smoldering expression grew even stormier. If Stiles had been Isaac, right now, he’d be in a fetal ball with his neck bared. Derek was going to have to make do with Stiles’ curling his hand over Derek’s calf as he tried to keep Derek grounded. “We have to get you out,” he said again, mulish.
“Derek,” Stiles said, a little surprised at how much his voice snapped. He took a breath, not very deep but pretty wet-sounding, and focused every ounce of patience and steadiness and calm that he could possibly fucking muster, turning it on Derek. “You cannot get yourself or Isaac killed over me. These bastards aren’t going to deal and they’re not going to care if you run out the white flag for me. This is…I want you to swear to me you won’t.”
“Stiles, they’re going to kill us, anyway,” Derek said in a voice that sounded like it’d been dragged by the ankle from a horse at full gallop for about ten miles. “They’re going to wait us out until we starve or find a way to break in here, and then they’re going to finish us off. It’s…that’s been their plan from the beginning. They never came to deal, they were never looking for a treaty, they…” He hung his head a little, winded like he’d been running, and Stiles dug his bloody fingernails into the fabric of Derek’s jeans, into the give of muscle beneath. “They lied from the second they set foot in town, and I should never have listened to them. They never intended to negotiate. They were just waiting for reinforcements. And I should’ve known that. I should’ve never given them the chance.”
“You’re the Alpha,” Stiles said, with a facial shrug. “Not God. You couldn’t have known.”
“An alpha would have known,” Derek growled, hackles almost visibly raising as his eyes flashed red. “The alpha should have known, it’s his job to know the threats to his pack and protect his betas from them.” Suddenly it was like Derek’s whole self cracked open, and Stiles watched it: watched his expression collapse to one of pain, watched his shoulders sag and his hands shake a little. For some reason, that fine tremor, that imploding of Derek’s carefully stoic calm, frightened Stiles more than the gunshots and the grenades and the long siege ever had, and he put his hands out and grabbed Derek’s, forcing them still. Pain nearly swamped him, then, Issac’s influence leeching away like it had never been, and Stiles had the uncomfortable suspicion that that rogue rib was stuck through something, probably something important.
All of this must’ve shown on his face, because Derek was making a high, lonesome noise in his chest and saying Stiles’ name with that authoritative snap that demanded answering. Stiles blinked his vision clear and shook his head a little, getting his words back after a second. “Derek Hale,” he said, and again, until Derek looked at him, eyes vacillating between hazel and red. Jesus, he needed to calm down before he hulked out and raged himself right into the hunters’ rifles. “If you do not stop blaming yourself for things you couldn’t change, I swear on your dick I will never have sex with you again.”
Derek blinked at him, eye color settling to human out of what looked to be pure shock. “What?” he said, somewhere between incredulity and rage. Stiles grinned at him.
“Made you look,” he said, and squeezed Derek’s hands as tight as he could. “I’m serious, though. Don’t, okay? Just. Don’t blame yourself for any of this. You…you did the best you could, with a situation so shitty it deserves its own epic poem. Shittywulf. That is the name of your epic poem about how shitty your life has been, and how you’ve managed to survive despite it.” He licked his lips - ew, blood - and added, “And how I’m really proud you did, okay?”
Derek pursed his mouth, hooking his thumbs over Stiles’ hands and squeezing back. “So much for surviving,” he said, looking Stiles over with a bleak expression. Stiles swallowed again, fighting back the fear, and Derek curled over him, pressing his forehead to Stiles’.
“Stiles, I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
“Derek,” Stiles replied, quiet, for Derek’s ears only. “I’m as scared as you are, okay? I thought…I thought we’d win this one, too.”
Derek made a soft, choked sound. “I should’ve…taken better care of you. If nothing else, if I couldn’t save anyone else--“
“There isn’t anything you could have done, Derek. Stop it. Please. I’m asking you to stop blaming yourself.”
Derek shook his head. “I don’t…I don’t even blame myself, not really. I know whose fault this was, and I know who’s to blame, I just…this shouldn’t have been me. It should’ve been Laura. It was never supposed to be me and when it was me I didn’t even know how to make the best of it. And now we’re here and I haven’t been able to save anyone. Again. And I just…” He swallowed, his voice rough from a dry throat. Even after all this time, Derek wasn’t really given to long speeches, and this was the most Stiles had heard him say at a go in a while. “I feel like I should say I’m sorry, even though I know I shouldn’t, and couldn’t even if it was my fault. Someone should be held accountable for this. For you.”
Derek acknowledging it like that - that Stiles was going to die - sent a shudder through Stiles’ body, but it also, in a way, made him feel better. There would be no arguing on that point, at least, and time spent not arguing about that could be time spent saying better things.
“I’m glad it was you,” Stiles replied simply, which made Derek’s trembling still, made his eyes focus solely on Stiles. “I’m glad ‘cause I can’t imagine having somebody else for an alpha, or not getting to mock your terrible leadership decisions. I’m glad it was you. If it hadn’t been you, me and you might never’ve…”
Derek was silent for a long moment, and then he nodded minutely. “I’m glad we had this. And the pack, for as long as they were here. I’m glad I still have Isaac, and I’m glad I’ve got you with me.”
Stiles’ throat felt tight, but with affection, this time. He grinned, sliding a hand up into Derek’s thick, matted hair, more like a wolf’s pelt now than it had ever been. “I knew you were nothing but a big gooey center, deep down.”
“Everything’s a sex joke to you, isn’t it.”
“That wasn’t even a sex joke! You made that one on your own, buddy! Hey, Isaac! Derek just voluntarily made a sex joke!”
“I heard it,” Isaac said, laughing, though it was suspiciously watery-sounding. Derek’s face was priceless.
“I take it all back.”
“Nope,” Stiles said, smirking, aching all over and starting to become a little concerned about the spots hovering at the edges of his vision. “No take-backsies. You love your pack.”
Derek sobered. “I love my pack,” he replied, effortlessly, and pressed a kiss to Stiles’ mouth, lingering just a moment. “And,” he said, lips moving against Stiles’, “I have to save it, or die trying. Do you understand?”
Stiles sighed softly, and then moaned, loud and broken, as the world spun, Derek gathering him up in his arms and standing, Stiles cradled against his chest like a broken little bag of bones and pain. “Ugh…fuck. I was afraid you were going to say something like that,” he said hoarsely. “‘M glad you’re the alpha and all but I do kinda wish Laura’d been around to kick your ass for me.”
Derek’s soft, resonant laugh was a pleasant vibration through Stiles’ body, and then there was the loping, rocking sensation of Derek walking. “I’m serious!” Stiles insisted. “She might’ve mellowed you out a little.”
“You obviously weren’t listening to anything I ever said about my sister,” Derek growled, and then Isaac was there, tipping a little water gently, slowly, into Stiles’ mouth, til Stiles couldn’t drink anymore. “’Mellow’ was not actually a setting in her personality.”
“So the grumpiness is just a hereditary Hale thing, then?”
Derek was finishing off the rest of Stiles’ water, and he took too long to answer, even then. “No,” he finally said, adjusting his grip on Stiles a little, hands tightening. Stiles heard the minute popping of bones and sinew as Derek and Isaac shifted forms. “No, the grumpiness is mine. And Laura always did help cheer me up.”
“Wish she’d been here for that, then,” Stiles replied softly, curling the hand he didn’t have wrapped in a death grip around his dad’s 9mm up against Derek’s chest, where Stiles could feel his heart.
“Yeah,” Derek replied. “Me too.”
It was nothing to disable one of their door-traps, burst out of the station, gun blazing and wolves roaring.
And it was nothing to take down two werewolves and a human, when you had the right amount of firepower.
***
"You've got a friend in me! You've got a friend in me! When the road looks rough ahead and you're--"
Stiles moaned, rolling over in bed and flopping his arm out to desperately pat his mattress for his phone, trying to shut it up. Fuck, who set a fucking alarm? ‘Cause it wasn't him. It wasn't for several seconds, as his fingers finally closed around his cell phone, that Stiles realized that that wasn't his alarm tone. That was his ringtone for--
"Hey buddy!" Scott's voice had that too-sharp chipper sound that it always took on when he was up bright and early and taking inordinate glee in making a still-sleepy Stiles miserable. "You alive over there? You drank a lot last night."
"Scott?" Stiles said groggily, feeling every bit of whatever hangover he was currently experiencing, Christ. Something about Scott’s voice was setting off weird little alarms in Stiles’ head, something he needed to remember. “Fuck, what happened?“
“You partied hard, man,” Scott laughed, while Stiles sat up and blinked against the sunlight streaming in through his bedroom window. He ached all over; he’d never hurt like this before. But, no, he had, hadn’t he? This pain wasn’t anything on--
Scott’s dead.
Derek’s dead.
I’m dead.
“What the fuck?”
“I think you might’ve finished off the last keg in Beacon Hills.” Scott’s voice was laughing at him, but Stiles couldn’t appreciate the ribbing right now.
“I was dreaming?” Stiles murmured, shaking his head, feeling a little bit like he might be underwater, or still asleep. I’m dead. Am I dead? That was not a dream.
“Say what? Yeah, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that really happened--“
“No, Scott, just…” He looked around. His room was exactly as it had been before the house was sold. Or almost, anyway…a few things seemed to be in different places than he remembered them, but it was really hard to know for sure. “Scott, what day is it?”
“Uhh, Saturday?”
“No no, like, the date.”
“Juuuuly? Twenty-…second.”
“Year?”
“…what, seriously? Are you okay, Stiles?”
“Yes, seriously, Scott! There’s…we might have a problem, here.”
“Okay, it’s 2017. Are you alright?”
Stiles rubbed at his head, scrubbing a palm over his scalp. Flipping the blankets back, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and barely bit back a cry of pain as his right leg suddenly radiated agony. Stiles’ breath stuck in his throat, and he blinked, wide-eyed, down at his leg and foot. They looked completely normal and whole, but he could feel how those bones and muscles had been crushed, just hours ago…maybe just minutes ago. It wasn’t like…like a phantom pain, a dream pain that was already starting to disappear. It was real, actual pain, strong enough that it made Stiles stagger and limp when he tried to get up and walk.
“No, I’m…I mean, yeah, I am, but. I shouldn’t be. I don’t think.” Stiles took a deep, steadying breath. “Okay. So. Did we die?”
“…what?”
“Are we…now, or have we ever been, dead, Scott?”
“I. Don’t think so, no.”
“So we weren’t…we haven’t been…fighting a group of hunters for the last six months who have been, um. Picking us off one by one.”
“Hunters? Stiles, what’re you talking about, man? You’re starting to creep me out.”
“Werewolf hunters, Scott, what other kind of hunters would I mean?”
“No, I just mean…no, there are no hunters, Stiles. Werewolf or otherwise, just the Argents, like always. Why, did you hear something? Chris’ll be pissed if someone’s violated the accords.”
Stiles opened his mouth to interject, and then the last six months caught up with him all of a sudden and he crumpled to the floor. “Scott. Tell me everyone is okay,” he said as fervently as he could with his voice shaking and his eyes filling with tears.
Scott went quiet a moment, then replied, smile audible in his voice, “Yeah, man. Everyone’s fine. Are you okay?”
Rubbing at his hurt leg and sniffling past his tears, Stiles mumbled, “Yeah, just. No, I haven’t heard anything, but. We need to talk. Is Doctor D at work today?”
“Yeah,” Scott replied, audibly sobering. “He’s here. We both are, I mean. You wanna pick up some lunch on the way in? I’m starving!”
Stiles huffed a shaky laugh, and then from downstairs, his dad called out, “Stiles? You up, son? I’ve gotta go to work but if you’ve died from alcohol poisoning I’m going to have to have a very stern talk with you.”
Stiles’ heart twisted in his chest, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe. Dad.
Then he rasped out, “Yeah, Scott, yeah. I’ll be there in a half-hour, okay? I. There’s somethin’ I gotta do first.”
***
“Mr. Stilinski,” Dr. Deaton greeted him with his Mona Lisa smile as Stiles stumbled in through the door of the clinic. “I see you survived last night’s festivities. Good to see you in one piece.”
Stiles gave him a long-suffering look. “Brother, you have no idea. Where’s Sc--“
“Here!” Scott piped cheerfully, appearing from the back room with a big grin and a toss of his bangs out of his face. His hair was longer than Stiles remembered it being, and he was gloriously, handsomely, goofy-smile-ly alive. Stiles launched himself at him, ignoring the twingeing pain in his leg.
“Oof! Stiles, dude,” Scott said, laughing but easily hugging him back, not hesitating a moment. He did that thing that he never admitted to doing but always did when he thought no one would notice - pressed his nose in against Stiles’ shorn hair and breathed deep of him, nuzzling at him a little. Stiles was just so happy to feel him hale (hah) and whole that he didn’t even feel like mocking him a little bit. “You’re really freaking me out, man.”
“Sorry,” Stiles said, pulling back only after another selfish second, curling and uncurling his fingers to try to still the shaking in his hands. “Just…well. That’s what I needed to talk to you about.”
Stiles told them, then, about the hunters from Texas, about having been stuck at the station with Isaac and Derek, about the grenade blast and how he’d been injured and dying and definitely not expecting to wake up to Scott’s phonecall today. Dr. D looked more and more enigmatic and zen as Stiles went on, while Scott just looked more and more confused. Finally he seemed unable to take it anymore, and waved his hands for Stiles to stop.
“Wait, wait. Derek? Isaac? Who’s that? And what train station are you talking about?”
It was Stiles’ turn to look incredulously at Scott. “Seriously? Derek? Derek Hale? Your alpha?”
Scott looked a little offended. “Alpha? Stiles, you know I don’t have an alpha. And definitely no one named Derek. I think maybe you just had a dream, man.” He smirked. “Mayyybe after watching a little too much porn? Derek Hale sounds kinda like a male stripper to me.”
“Oh my god what a terrifying…” Stiles said, before Scott’s words fully sunk in. “Wait. You’re. You’re serious? Derek isn’t…you don’t know Derek?”
“Neither of you do,” Dr. Deaton said somberly, looking at the floor with a soft sigh. “You’ve never met him, to my knowledge. Certainly Scott isn’t in his pack. Derek is not the alpha, either.”
Stiles’ eyes bugged out. “What, Peter’s still alive?” The thought send cold horror trickling down his spine. Motherfucker’d been hard to kill the first time and even harder the second. If they had to kill him again Stiles thought he might cry.
Dr. Deaton was looking at him strangely, though - like he was only just now truly taking Stiles seriously. Stiles kind of wanted to slap him for that, really. At least his Deaton had respected Stiles, even if Stiles hadn’t been able to save him, in the end. “You seem to know a lot about him.”
“I know a lot about a lot,” Stiles said in frustration. “You taught me most of it, as it so happens. Look, if you need to quiz me, go ahead. Or I could just go back and whip you up a little willow and laurel compress with a tincture of mountain ash for helping cure wounds inflicted by an alpha. I know where you keep all the supplies.”
Deaton blinked. Stiles had the singular and sadly fleeting sensation of sweet, sweet victory at, for once, taking the man by surprise. He savored it a moment, then pressed on. “I know that Peter Hale bit Scott six years ago and that we killed him - or, well, Derek killed him, and then he became the alpha.”
The doctor’s expression hardened a bit. “You’ve clearly gotten some bad information, Stiles,” he said. “After Peter bit Scott, he was tracked down and eventually killed by his nephew and niece. Derek did not land the killing blow, however. Laura did.”
Stiles stared at him, mouth agape, for several seconds. “Laura? Laura Hale?”
“Wait, why didn’t I know about any of this?” Scott said, sounding genuinely put out about it, and maybe a little hurt. Stiles knew how he felt.
Deaton had the grace to look slightly constipated, which Stiles took for chagrin. “It was decided that it would be better for you not to be drawn into their family politics. They asked me to help you and keep an eye on you and to let them know if you suffered any ill effects from your link with Peter. But you seemed to be doing fine, and as you had no desire to explore your lycanthropy further, we were all of the opinion that it was best you were taught to control your power first, and be informed of other matters only as necessary.” He sighed. “Argent almost undid all this, of course, by confronting you directly about it when he found out. But he and I discussed it and realized you’d be safest with him and his family.”
“Without talking to me about it at all?” Scott said, voice ratcheting up with every word. Stiles touched his arm comfortingly, incensed on his behalf but needing this not to devolve into a shouting match just now. He rubbed at his face and groaned a little as he frantically tried to digest this information.
“So. So Laura Hale’s alive.”
“Yes,” Doctor Deaton replied, frowning. “I take it that’s unusual for you.”
“Yeah. In my…whatever, world, timeline, she’s dead. Peter killed her to become the alpha so he could heal faster. Of course, it arguably only kicked his crazy up to eleven. I say ‘arguably’ because I can and will argue that his crazy started way before that.”
“So in your version of events, Peter killed Laura, and then Derek killed Peter and is now the alpha? And Scott is in his pack?”
“Yeah,” Stiles replied, then, subdued, corrected himself. “Well. Not now. Now we’re all dead.”
That certainly left an awkward and sucking silence behind it. Stiles always had been good at creating those. Finally Scott put his hand on Stiles’ shoulder, and Stiles jumped a little, before leaning into the touch, letting out a shaky breath. “We were…it was just me and Derek and Isaac left, trapped in the old train station, and the last thing I remember, the last thing we did, was leave the station and walk right into a firing squad. Shooting gallery.” He made an explosion noise, with a vague and yet eloquent hand gesture. “Thing.”
He rubbed at his eyes. “The thing is…the weird thing is that we were talking about this. Not…not this, specifically, I mean, but. About Laura, about how she was supposed to be the alpha instead of Derek. That’s what we were talking about when we…”
Deaton’s face cleared, his Miyagi-esque little smile coming back. Stiles had long ago accepted the sad reality that Dr. D was just always going to be a better Yoda than him. “What exactly were you saying about it?” he asked mildly. Stiles shrugged.
“Derek had…said that it shouldn’t have been him that was the alpha - like, ‘cause he was never trained up for it, y’know? - and that it should’ve been Laura. I told him I was glad it’d been him because I couldn’t imagine another alpha, but that I did wish Laura could’ve been around to make his life less terrible.”
“You used those words? Precisely? That you wished she hadn’t been killed?”
Stiles frowned. “I…guess so. I think so, yeah. What does that--“ Deaton’s raised eyebrow was all it took, and Stiles felt the blood draining out of his face. He flailed out a hand to catch himself on the front counter, and Scott looked at him in alarm, tightening his hand on Stiles’ elbow.
“You’re kidding me,” Stiles said.
“What?” Scott said, frowning in confusion as he looked between the two men.
“I’m surprised I never mentioned this phenomenon to you,” Deaton said mildly, “in your reality, I mean. I know I’ve told you about it in this one.”
“No, you did, I just…death,” Stiles told Scott by way of explanation, choosing to ignore the time paradoxes the good doctor was starting to make him contemplate. His head was hurting enough already. “It’s…there’s all this stuff about death and the gateway between it and life, and how souls generate more electrical energy in their auras when people are in peril and…it all sounded like complete bull to me the first time he explained it to me, and. Well. Up til right now I was still pretty convinced it was.” He made a face at Deaton. “I thought that kind of thing needed intent,” he said dubiously.
Deaton gave an infuriating little facial shrug. “Less so when someone is more primed to channel that kind of energy, as you are, or as I assume you are, all other things being equal between your plane of reality and this one. And you were with your packmates, which intensifies energy fields, too.”
Scott still looked lost, not following Stiles’ Swiss-cheese logic, which Stiles supposed he really couldn’t blame him for. He mentally chewed over Deaton’s theories as he turned to look Scott in the face. “The whole point is that death is magical, in a weird and kind of creepy way, and that magic you do while dying or coming near death is more powerful than it usually is. Sometimes you can even do it accidentally, which…I guess is kinda what happened. I handed the universe a dying wish - that Laura Hale had not died - and the universe gave it to me. Because the universe is kind of a weirdo sometimes, honestly. Not that I’m complaining,” he added quickly, putting his hands up placatingly, like he expected the universe to slap him in retaliation. “I mean…” He swallowed hard, meeting Scott’s eyes again, feeling the emptiness in his heart that had yawned open when he watched his best friend die. His expression must’ve been frightening, because Scott slid his hand up Stiles’ arm to dig his fingers reassuringly into the meat of Stiles’ shoulder. “Hell. I don’t really want to go back to the alternative. I’d like to pretend it was just a terrible dream from here on out, if it’s all the same to everybody.”
“Yeah, I don’t see why you shouldn’t,” Scott said, immediate and emphatic, turning to look at Dr. Deaton for approval. His hand tightened still further on Stiles, possessive, and Stiles wanted to lean into him and just hide his face for a while. His leg still hurt and he felt unsteady on his feet - still waiting, he realized, for this to be the dream, and the real world still to be the horror of those last few months. “I mean. It’s not like it’s reversible, right? Not like the universe or whatever is gonna change its mind?”
“No,” Deaton replied surely, shaking his head. “No, this is…a final kind of thing. Stiles gave his life for this wish, and it just so happened that, in granting it, the universe had to grant his life back, too. It isn’t unheard of; many speculate this could be the origin of the concept of an afterlife.”
Stiles smirked. “Yeah, well. If this were heaven, I’m guessing I wouldn’t have this hangover from hell, would I?”
Deaton huffed a laugh. “Probably not.”
“Alright, then,” Stiles said, heaving another sigh to steady himself, slowly allowing himself to believe that this was the real life and not just a fantasy (and dammit, it must be real, because now he had Freddie Mercury stuck in his head and he was pretty sure heaven didn’t go in for that kind of thing, either). Stiles’ lips pulled up in a grin. “Alright! I’m alive! We’re all alive! We rock! But now what?”
Dr. Deaton raised his eyebrows. “Well, since you’re here now and all, perhaps it would be best if you acquainted yourself with the parts of your life that are different, now, from what you’re used to.”
“Good idea,” Scott said. “I can probably help with that.”
Stiles nodded, then pinned Deaton with a Look. “First things first, though,” he said in his most authoritative tone. It was mostly ineffective against disobedient betas and recalcitrant veterinarians, but he had a feeling he’d be listened to, this time. After all, he’d just come back from the dead. “I think you should fill us - both of us - in on all the wolf stuff you haven’t told us so far.”
***
“Soooo…you and Allison?” Stiles prodded, leaning against the passenger-side door of Scott’s car, the wind from the half-open window cool as it ruffled the collar of his favorite shirt. This shirt was long since toast, in his old life. (It was funny how easy it was becoming, thinking of the former as old and this as new, but the unsettled feeling remained, and Stiles was refusing, for now, to think about why.) “Are you guys…?”
Scott raised his eyebrows, cheeks dimpling as he tried not to smile. “Are we what?” he teased, and Stiles gave him an unimpressed look for deliberately playing dumb. “Are weeee mortal enemies? Ninja assassins? Raising five kids together?”
“Dating, you enormous weirdo, and I’m worried at some of the places your brain took that. Ninja assassins, really?”
“You’re just jealous you’re not a ninja assassin. And yeah, of course.” Yeah, nope, this world couldn’t be that different; there was that dopey smile Stiles knew and loved. Six years of stressful relationship ups and downs and finally permanent ups had not been able to rob Stiles’ Scott of that, either. He guessed that was really the best thing that could’ve happened to him, right that moment; if Scott was still stupidly, ridiculously, illogically in love with Allison Argent, then he was Stiles’ Scott, and the universe was all going to be okay. “We’re, um. I’m pretty sure we’re, y’know. Gonna get married.”
Stiles grinned like an idiot. He had to bite his tongue really hard not to spoil any secrets, like how Scott proposed or how Allison smiled when she said yes. Those were good memories, but they weren’t for here and now. Stiles had the sudden thought that he should write them down, sometime soon, like in a diary, so he didn’t forget. There were some things he couldn’t scrub from his memory fast enough, but he didn’t want to lose everything. He wanted to keep some of them, for his eyes only; it seemed important. He’d do it just as soon as he got a few more important things out of the way.
“Well of course you’re gonna get married, dude. You guys are fated. Shakespearean.”
Scott wrinkled his nose on a laugh. “No no, don’t say that! I’ve had it up to here with our relationship being compared to Shakespeare, god, it’s like no one even read that play, don’t they know what happens?”
Stiles propped his feet up on the dash, watching the edges of town give way to the open, forested surround of the California countryside the closer they got to the Preserve. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I was referring to ‘Much Ado about Nothing,’ which I have decided is pretty much the official theme of my life.”
Scott shook his head, grinning and tapping the steering wheel in a nervous rhythm. “Never read it,” he admitted. “I didn’t think you even liked Shakespeare.”
“I really don’t, but. I got bored on stakeouts a lot, and the high school library always did suck. And if you aren’t Claudio then nobody is Claudio.”
“Oh god, stakeouts?”
They compared notes about the kinds of activities Stiles was used to doing, which weren’t, all told, that different from the sorts of things Scott was used to Stiles doing, really. It was just that Scott was used to doing them with Stiles and Allison, just the three of them, or sometimes with a reluctant Chris Argent joining the fray when absolutely necessary; the major difference seemed to be the frequency with which Stiles had become accustomed to beating off the ever-worsening horde of supernatural nasties compared with how relatively seldom Scott and Stiles and sometimes-Argent did in this reality. Beacon Hills v. 2.0 bore markedly less resemblance to a Hellmouth than Stiles was used to, at least from Scott’s point of view, and he puzzled as they drove about why that was.
The further through the Preserve they went, though, meant the closer they were getting to the Hale place, and the tighter the knots in Stiles’ stomach were pulling. Scott grew more quiet, too, unease settling over them like a blanket. The Hale siblings knew they were coming; Deaton had called ahead to let them know, and to tell them something of what had happened and why the situation had changed. Stiles could only imagine how put out Derek would be about it - not that that discouraged him, but it would be a hurdle they’d have to spend too much time overcoming. To say nothing of Laura and how she might feel about having two strangers thrust into her life, like this; she was a totally unknown entity, really, despite all Derek had told him over the last few years about her.
Strangers. That word rolled around, an ugly, spiked little marble, in Stiles’ brain as they turned off the state route onto the gravel access road hemming the eastern boundary of the Preserve and separating it from Hale land. Stiles wasn’t sure, deep down where he told himself truths and kept them secret from everyone, that he was ready for this. Getting his life back, getting his best friend and his father and the chance at a whole pack again, all of that was infinitely worth any number of sacrifices. But never in his wildest imaginings had Stiles thought he’d be asked to sacrifice Derek. He dreaded in every cell the moment he got out of the car and walked up to the house and met this Derek for the first time, knowing he would see no recognition, no emotion, none of the hard-won affection he’d become not simply accustomed to, but dependent on, there in that last year or so. Stiles had a feeling that no matter how much he braced for it, he’d never truly be ready to see Derek look at him blankly, knowing what had been there only twenty-four hours before.
It was nice, in a way, to get a shock, upon driving up to the Hale property; the house was being rebuilt. The exterior looked to be almost finished, though even from here, a peek through the window showed it still dim and grim inside. The outside of the house was a skeleton of scaffolding and tarpaulin, and a small pop-up trailer had put down roots in the front yard, about twenty feet from the house and linked to it with an arm-thick bundle of electrical cables like an umbilical cord. The whole property was still, unnaturally still, like the forest was holding its breath; Stiles had a sudden memory of Derek telling him that animals hated when local werewolves got stressed out, and often cleared out of the area for days.
Stiles swallowed hard, got out of the car.
He was rubbing his damp palms nervously against the thighs of his jeans and ignoring Scott’s nudging when the door to the trailer opened and Stiles’ breath stuttered out. It wasn’t Derek. All of Stiles’ pent-up worry kind of fell like Jenga blocks, heavy, in his gut; it made sense Laura would come to the door. She was the alpha, after all.
Stiles had always thought, privately, that she didn’t much look like Derek. They both had strong features, but where Derek’s were in his jaw and his nose and around his eyes, Laura’s were her mouth and her cheekbones and her thick, inky eyelashes. She was too severe to be properly thought of as pretty, and she looked like maybe she’d eviscerate you for the thought even if you did have it, though that was probably more the current situation than her actual demeanor.
She was a hell of a lot shorter than Stiles was expecting, that was for damn sure. It was weird to tower over her by almost a foot and be looking down into alpha-red, don’t-fuck-with-me eyes.
Those eyes flicked between him and Scott, and no one said anything for a moment while Stiles felt Scott fighting the urge to bristle beside him. Finally Laura nodded, said in a soft mezzo, “C’mon in. You’re Stiles and Scott?”
“Yeah,” Stiles said, following her up into the cramped space of the pop-up. “That’s us. Um. It’s nice to…to finally meet you,” he said, feeling awkward even as he did, and particularly at the rough note in his voice that made it painfully obvious just how important to him this really was. He’d wanted to meet Laura for a long time, know her, see what kind of person she was and match her up with Derek, see which of the jagged edges Stiles had tried to soften over time were always meant to match up to Laura’s, instead.
She raised an eyebrow at him, which, yeah, okay, Stiles, and gestured for them to sit at the modular kitchen table. Her yearbook photos, Stiles’ only visual record of her, hadn’t done justice to how self-possessed and collected she was. Stiles knew she was only thirty-two, but she carried herself like someone a lot older and more grizzled. Stiles was curious how much of that had always been her and how much of it had been burnt into her.
“I wanted to meet you a lot sooner,” she said, leaning back against the sink and crossing her arms over her chest. “But someone,” she raised her voice pointedly, “thought it would be a bad idea.”
“Deaton told us there wasn’t any reason for it,” came words from just outside the camper’s canvas sides, making Stiles jump and shiver. He jumped again when the door popped open, craning around in his seat for a look at--
It was all there. The plain, flat expression of a man looking on unfamiliar faces, the stubborn set of his jaw that Stiles both loved and hated, the deepening crow’s feet beside his eyes under eyebrows drawn into a scowl that Stiles had learned only through persistence was not actually permanent. The urge to reach out and touch him was so strong Stiles nearly tipped out of the booth, but digging his fingers into the thin seat cushions helped him both to balance and to keep his hands to himself.
He’d been so right about how much it would hurt. He hadn’t quite anticipated Derek looking so physically different. He was still obviously Derek, and still obviously a werewolf (seriously, now that Stiles was in the know, it was a little hard to believe he’d ever thought Derek Hale could be anything but a werewolf; even beyond the scruffiness and the lowering eyebrows, Derek - and Laura too - had a wildness about their eyes, in their posture, that called to mind coiled muscles and lots of teeth). But his frame wasn’t quite so aggressively muscular as Stiles was used to seeing, and he was much more noticeably tanned. He also looked significantly better-fed and groomed than Stiles usually saw Derek. Maybe the most incongruous thing was that he was wearing a plain white t-shirt and jeans - no seasonally-inappropriate leather jacket, no black henleys or dirty, blood-smudged tanks. Just plain shirt, plain jeans, and bare feet. It was like seeing Derek in the softer, quieter moments Stiles had started to enjoy over the last couple of years of their acquaintanceship-turned-friendship-turned-mateship, only he was soft-all-over and not just in his eyes and his voice and his hands in the dark.
Derek gave them a detached, assessing look, then turned his focus to Laura, pursing his mouth in familiar exasperation. “You should have told him no,” he muttered.
Laura snorted. “And drag this out another three years for no reason? Yeah, no.” She turned back to Scott. “We were all going to be introduced when you were--“
“Twenty-five,” Scott finished for her, nodding. “I know. Alan told me.”
“Right. When you’d fully matured and could make a neutral, informed decision about whether you wanted to join our pack or just sign the accord and live here as a resident omega. But my point --“ Here Derek snorted and turned to climb up into the bed at his end of the camper, rummaging through a cabinet and slamming its door unnecessarily hard. “-- My point was that you couldn’t possibly make an informed decision by that point if you didn’t at least know us, so. Consider this a formal introduction.” She took a deep breath, let it out, and turned to Stiles. “What’s your story?”
“Which story? The original story or the revised and annotated edition?”
Laura’s lip quirked, and Derek’s passive-aggressive rustling in the back was momentarily stilled. “How ‘bout you start with the Reader’s Digest version and we’ll come back to the footnotes as needed.”
Stiles glanced over at the curtain-strung cubby where Derek was currently lurking (no change there, then) and licked his lips. “Yeah. I have a feeling you’ll like the ending.”
On to Part 2
Author: sarahsan
Recipient: chase_acow
Pairings: Stiles/Derek
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 14,763
Warnings: None
Summary: With the last of the pack cornered and things looking grim, Stiles unknowingly makes a wish the universe can't refuse.
Author's Notes: Well, this was supposed to be about five thousand words long and mostly shippy. It came out about fifteen thousand words long and mostly character-study-y. This is what happens when I'm left in charge of something. All my thanks to lirren, who both provided me with the original prompt that spawned the fic and betaed/cheerled me on to victory! All mistakes are my own. Title from Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing. Happy holidays, chase_acow! I hope you have a fabulous season, and I TRULY apologize for the inexcusable dearth of porn! D:
Stiles spat blood from his mouth, his jaw and tongue hurting to do it. Hell, everything on his face hurt, everything on his body hurt, and he was feeling pretty bad about his prospects of ever walking again on his crushed right foot. He supposed he should be grateful that he wasn’t planning on running anymore anytime soon; where he and Derek and Isaac had holed up last week in the old train station (because the universe was an ironic son of a bitch), they pretty much either had to hold out or. Well. Not.
Isaac slid a hand, too-tight, around Stiles’ knee, but the pain only blossomed there for a moment and then was blissfully gone. Stiles shot him a grateful look and released the empty magazine from his gun, hands sure while his stomach flipped. He still hated guns. He’d always hated guns. That’d been sort of his mom’s doing. The steadiness of his fingers while he loaded in a new clip, he’d gotten from his dad. “Thanks, man,” he muttered, slurring a little around the pain in his face. Stiles was lucky still to be breathing after that last grenade blast. He’d been way too close. But it was kind of hard to feel lucky when you’d violently lost three teeth. Isaac whimpered a little under his breath, the sound trapped in his chest, and Stiles reached out, curled his hand over Isaac’s nape and gave him a squeeze that was meant to reassure. Isaac looked up at him, face wan and very white compared to their dim surroundings and Isaac’s grimy clothes. The hunters had cut the water to the station three days ago, and they all three looked and smelled pretty gamy by this point.
Stiles would’ve given his other foot to catch a glimpse of Derek’s filthy face, right now.
“He’ll be back soon,” Isaac said, but he sounded an awful lot like he was trying to convince himself. He looked and sounded even more frightened about Derek’s absence than Stiles was, but Stiles couldn’t even hold it against him. He and Derek might be mates, but Derek was Isaac’s alpha, and Isaac had taken Erica’s and Scott’s deaths hardest of all of them, watching the new family he’d painstakingly collected over the last two years ripped away from him, just when he was starting to forget the first family he’d had taken away from him. Stiles had simply felt it all as rage, turning his mourning into fury; Isaac looked more every day like the experience was turning him into a ghost.
Stiles nodded, couldn’t not try to comfort him. Isaac was very effectively comforting Stiles right now, after all, by sucking out the fiery pain til it was barely more than a niggling throbbing ache. Stiles’ mangled foot may as well be a sprained ankle for all he felt it, and he knew Isaac liked to be useful. Stiles rubbed his thumb along the contoured handgrip of his dad’s old service pistol, presumed by the BCPD to have been lost at the scene of his death. There were a lot of things they’d been forced to assume about the way Sheriff Stilinski died - and Stiles was pretty sure their assumptions had not included supernatural creatures of any kind - but Stiles was just glad he’d been there at the time, been with his dad. He was also pretty glad Dad hadn’t had to be here for all the shit that had gone down since. He’d be pissed if he knew some of the risks Stiles had been taking lately.
“Yeah, he’ll be back. He just went to check the booby traps on the doors so we don’t have an encore performance of…” He gestured to his bloodied foot, and Isaac made another helpless sound. “He’s fine. He knows better than to--“
“I’m here,” Derek said, and Stiles and Isaac both visibly slumped in relief. “And yes. I know better than to try to go back out again. They’re obviously not in a bargaining mood.”
“Derek, we can’t stay here,” Isaac said, soft and careful, making sure to keep his eyes lowered as he did so he wouldn’t sound as blatantly challenging. Stiles gave his nape another squeeze and stifled his automatic eyeroll; none of the other betas had much gone in for all that pack heirarchy stuff, but Isaac had seemed primed for it. Probably a holdover from living with his dad, a thought that Stiles had shared with Scott once and which had made Scott almost glue himself to Isaac’s side for a week. Stiles remembered this one time that Scott had--
No, he couldn’t…he couldn’t right now. Stiles had not yet properly mourned his best friend, and he couldn’t very well start now, with a dozen hunters set up outside the doors of their makeshift fortress. Those hunters had Scott’s, and Allison’s, and Erica’s, and Boyd’s, and Mrs. McCall’s blood on their hands; they’d taken what the other werewolves and the chimaera and the witches and the wendigo had not, could not. Looking up at Derek from his position sprawled on the floor and propped up on a support column, Stiles could see every member of their lost pack writ stark and ugly in Derek’s stony, frightening face. Stiles swallowed reflexively; he loved Derek, but the prey part of his psyche was still alive and kicking, and prone to making an appearance when Derek looked like that.
It was only when Stiles registered the low, furious growl in Derek’s throat that he realized Derek was looking like that because of him. “What?” Stiles asked, but he had a feeling he already knew. They couldn’t stay here, Isaac had said, because they needed to get to the hospital. Because they needed to get Stiles to the hospital. Because if they didn’t, there probably wouldn’t be a Stiles for very much longer.
The thought tightened up Stiles’ throat, made his heart race, which, of course, somehow managed to hurt. Isaac’s eyes went back to Stiles and he tightened his fingers around Stiles’ knee again, trying to soothe, trying to calm. Stiles refocused his eyes on Derek’s, red and luminous in the low light, and told himself very distinctly not to panic. Not now, not about this.
“Are the doors secure?” Stiles asked him in a flat voice. Derek blinked once and the moment passed; he folded his bulk up next to Stiles in a crouch, nodding his head.
“Yes. They’re not getting back in that way. And it looks like they haven’t tried the roof again, either.”
Stiles snorted, then winced and wished he hadn’t done that. There was definitely a rib somewhere a rib was not supposed to be. “Yeah well. Fifty thousand volts straight to the nipples’ll do that to you.”
Isaac burst out laughing at that, startling all three of them, though Derek mostly just looked confused and a little wounded in his Clueless Alpha Werewolf way. Stiles grinned at Isaac - the joke had been mostly for him, anyway - as Isaac shook his head.
“You’ve been saving that up for weeks, haven’t you?” he asked Stiles. Stiles only grinned bigger.
“Fuck yes I have. Knew it’d pay off eventually.” He licked at his lips, pulling a face at the renewed metallic tang of blood. “Ugh. Go get me some water, will you?” he asked.
“I’ll go,” Derek said, immediately standing. “Isaac should stay and--“
“I’ll be okay for the two minutes it’ll take him to grab me a bottle from inside,” Stiles said, making a shooing motion with his hand. “You. Sit your ass back down. Take a break for a minute.”
Isaac and Derek traded a look, then Derek nodded almost imperceptibly and sat his ass back down. Isaac gave Stiles a tight smile and a last press of his fingers, draining out that last bit of pain before he straightened and went to go get them some water.
Stiles sighed softly after a moment, reaching out to poke Derek in the shin. “How ya holdin’ up, boss?”
Derek’s mouth did something complicated at Stiles’ unconsciously using Boyd’s old pet name for Derek. “Fine,” he said gruffly, which was at least two-thirds a lie and not even that well-veiled. “Isaac’s right. We’ve got to get you out of here.”
“Yeah,” Stiles said ruefully. “Unfortunately, getting me out of here would necessitate one or both of you taking yourselves out of here, too, and I’m pretty sure they have plans to open fire if one of us so much as pops our head out again for a breath of fresh air.”
Derek’s already-smoldering expression grew even stormier. If Stiles had been Isaac, right now, he’d be in a fetal ball with his neck bared. Derek was going to have to make do with Stiles’ curling his hand over Derek’s calf as he tried to keep Derek grounded. “We have to get you out,” he said again, mulish.
“Derek,” Stiles said, a little surprised at how much his voice snapped. He took a breath, not very deep but pretty wet-sounding, and focused every ounce of patience and steadiness and calm that he could possibly fucking muster, turning it on Derek. “You cannot get yourself or Isaac killed over me. These bastards aren’t going to deal and they’re not going to care if you run out the white flag for me. This is…I want you to swear to me you won’t.”
“Stiles, they’re going to kill us, anyway,” Derek said in a voice that sounded like it’d been dragged by the ankle from a horse at full gallop for about ten miles. “They’re going to wait us out until we starve or find a way to break in here, and then they’re going to finish us off. It’s…that’s been their plan from the beginning. They never came to deal, they were never looking for a treaty, they…” He hung his head a little, winded like he’d been running, and Stiles dug his bloody fingernails into the fabric of Derek’s jeans, into the give of muscle beneath. “They lied from the second they set foot in town, and I should never have listened to them. They never intended to negotiate. They were just waiting for reinforcements. And I should’ve known that. I should’ve never given them the chance.”
“You’re the Alpha,” Stiles said, with a facial shrug. “Not God. You couldn’t have known.”
“An alpha would have known,” Derek growled, hackles almost visibly raising as his eyes flashed red. “The alpha should have known, it’s his job to know the threats to his pack and protect his betas from them.” Suddenly it was like Derek’s whole self cracked open, and Stiles watched it: watched his expression collapse to one of pain, watched his shoulders sag and his hands shake a little. For some reason, that fine tremor, that imploding of Derek’s carefully stoic calm, frightened Stiles more than the gunshots and the grenades and the long siege ever had, and he put his hands out and grabbed Derek’s, forcing them still. Pain nearly swamped him, then, Issac’s influence leeching away like it had never been, and Stiles had the uncomfortable suspicion that that rogue rib was stuck through something, probably something important.
All of this must’ve shown on his face, because Derek was making a high, lonesome noise in his chest and saying Stiles’ name with that authoritative snap that demanded answering. Stiles blinked his vision clear and shook his head a little, getting his words back after a second. “Derek Hale,” he said, and again, until Derek looked at him, eyes vacillating between hazel and red. Jesus, he needed to calm down before he hulked out and raged himself right into the hunters’ rifles. “If you do not stop blaming yourself for things you couldn’t change, I swear on your dick I will never have sex with you again.”
Derek blinked at him, eye color settling to human out of what looked to be pure shock. “What?” he said, somewhere between incredulity and rage. Stiles grinned at him.
“Made you look,” he said, and squeezed Derek’s hands as tight as he could. “I’m serious, though. Don’t, okay? Just. Don’t blame yourself for any of this. You…you did the best you could, with a situation so shitty it deserves its own epic poem. Shittywulf. That is the name of your epic poem about how shitty your life has been, and how you’ve managed to survive despite it.” He licked his lips - ew, blood - and added, “And how I’m really proud you did, okay?”
Derek pursed his mouth, hooking his thumbs over Stiles’ hands and squeezing back. “So much for surviving,” he said, looking Stiles over with a bleak expression. Stiles swallowed again, fighting back the fear, and Derek curled over him, pressing his forehead to Stiles’.
“Stiles, I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
“Derek,” Stiles replied, quiet, for Derek’s ears only. “I’m as scared as you are, okay? I thought…I thought we’d win this one, too.”
Derek made a soft, choked sound. “I should’ve…taken better care of you. If nothing else, if I couldn’t save anyone else--“
“There isn’t anything you could have done, Derek. Stop it. Please. I’m asking you to stop blaming yourself.”
Derek shook his head. “I don’t…I don’t even blame myself, not really. I know whose fault this was, and I know who’s to blame, I just…this shouldn’t have been me. It should’ve been Laura. It was never supposed to be me and when it was me I didn’t even know how to make the best of it. And now we’re here and I haven’t been able to save anyone. Again. And I just…” He swallowed, his voice rough from a dry throat. Even after all this time, Derek wasn’t really given to long speeches, and this was the most Stiles had heard him say at a go in a while. “I feel like I should say I’m sorry, even though I know I shouldn’t, and couldn’t even if it was my fault. Someone should be held accountable for this. For you.”
Derek acknowledging it like that - that Stiles was going to die - sent a shudder through Stiles’ body, but it also, in a way, made him feel better. There would be no arguing on that point, at least, and time spent not arguing about that could be time spent saying better things.
“I’m glad it was you,” Stiles replied simply, which made Derek’s trembling still, made his eyes focus solely on Stiles. “I’m glad ‘cause I can’t imagine having somebody else for an alpha, or not getting to mock your terrible leadership decisions. I’m glad it was you. If it hadn’t been you, me and you might never’ve…”
Derek was silent for a long moment, and then he nodded minutely. “I’m glad we had this. And the pack, for as long as they were here. I’m glad I still have Isaac, and I’m glad I’ve got you with me.”
Stiles’ throat felt tight, but with affection, this time. He grinned, sliding a hand up into Derek’s thick, matted hair, more like a wolf’s pelt now than it had ever been. “I knew you were nothing but a big gooey center, deep down.”
“Everything’s a sex joke to you, isn’t it.”
“That wasn’t even a sex joke! You made that one on your own, buddy! Hey, Isaac! Derek just voluntarily made a sex joke!”
“I heard it,” Isaac said, laughing, though it was suspiciously watery-sounding. Derek’s face was priceless.
“I take it all back.”
“Nope,” Stiles said, smirking, aching all over and starting to become a little concerned about the spots hovering at the edges of his vision. “No take-backsies. You love your pack.”
Derek sobered. “I love my pack,” he replied, effortlessly, and pressed a kiss to Stiles’ mouth, lingering just a moment. “And,” he said, lips moving against Stiles’, “I have to save it, or die trying. Do you understand?”
Stiles sighed softly, and then moaned, loud and broken, as the world spun, Derek gathering him up in his arms and standing, Stiles cradled against his chest like a broken little bag of bones and pain. “Ugh…fuck. I was afraid you were going to say something like that,” he said hoarsely. “‘M glad you’re the alpha and all but I do kinda wish Laura’d been around to kick your ass for me.”
Derek’s soft, resonant laugh was a pleasant vibration through Stiles’ body, and then there was the loping, rocking sensation of Derek walking. “I’m serious!” Stiles insisted. “She might’ve mellowed you out a little.”
“You obviously weren’t listening to anything I ever said about my sister,” Derek growled, and then Isaac was there, tipping a little water gently, slowly, into Stiles’ mouth, til Stiles couldn’t drink anymore. “’Mellow’ was not actually a setting in her personality.”
“So the grumpiness is just a hereditary Hale thing, then?”
Derek was finishing off the rest of Stiles’ water, and he took too long to answer, even then. “No,” he finally said, adjusting his grip on Stiles a little, hands tightening. Stiles heard the minute popping of bones and sinew as Derek and Isaac shifted forms. “No, the grumpiness is mine. And Laura always did help cheer me up.”
“Wish she’d been here for that, then,” Stiles replied softly, curling the hand he didn’t have wrapped in a death grip around his dad’s 9mm up against Derek’s chest, where Stiles could feel his heart.
“Yeah,” Derek replied. “Me too.”
It was nothing to disable one of their door-traps, burst out of the station, gun blazing and wolves roaring.
And it was nothing to take down two werewolves and a human, when you had the right amount of firepower.
***
"You've got a friend in me! You've got a friend in me! When the road looks rough ahead and you're--"
Stiles moaned, rolling over in bed and flopping his arm out to desperately pat his mattress for his phone, trying to shut it up. Fuck, who set a fucking alarm? ‘Cause it wasn't him. It wasn't for several seconds, as his fingers finally closed around his cell phone, that Stiles realized that that wasn't his alarm tone. That was his ringtone for--
"Hey buddy!" Scott's voice had that too-sharp chipper sound that it always took on when he was up bright and early and taking inordinate glee in making a still-sleepy Stiles miserable. "You alive over there? You drank a lot last night."
"Scott?" Stiles said groggily, feeling every bit of whatever hangover he was currently experiencing, Christ. Something about Scott’s voice was setting off weird little alarms in Stiles’ head, something he needed to remember. “Fuck, what happened?“
“You partied hard, man,” Scott laughed, while Stiles sat up and blinked against the sunlight streaming in through his bedroom window. He ached all over; he’d never hurt like this before. But, no, he had, hadn’t he? This pain wasn’t anything on--
Scott’s dead.
Derek’s dead.
I’m dead.
“What the fuck?”
“I think you might’ve finished off the last keg in Beacon Hills.” Scott’s voice was laughing at him, but Stiles couldn’t appreciate the ribbing right now.
“I was dreaming?” Stiles murmured, shaking his head, feeling a little bit like he might be underwater, or still asleep. I’m dead. Am I dead? That was not a dream.
“Say what? Yeah, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that really happened--“
“No, Scott, just…” He looked around. His room was exactly as it had been before the house was sold. Or almost, anyway…a few things seemed to be in different places than he remembered them, but it was really hard to know for sure. “Scott, what day is it?”
“Uhh, Saturday?”
“No no, like, the date.”
“Juuuuly? Twenty-…second.”
“Year?”
“…what, seriously? Are you okay, Stiles?”
“Yes, seriously, Scott! There’s…we might have a problem, here.”
“Okay, it’s 2017. Are you alright?”
Stiles rubbed at his head, scrubbing a palm over his scalp. Flipping the blankets back, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and barely bit back a cry of pain as his right leg suddenly radiated agony. Stiles’ breath stuck in his throat, and he blinked, wide-eyed, down at his leg and foot. They looked completely normal and whole, but he could feel how those bones and muscles had been crushed, just hours ago…maybe just minutes ago. It wasn’t like…like a phantom pain, a dream pain that was already starting to disappear. It was real, actual pain, strong enough that it made Stiles stagger and limp when he tried to get up and walk.
“No, I’m…I mean, yeah, I am, but. I shouldn’t be. I don’t think.” Stiles took a deep, steadying breath. “Okay. So. Did we die?”
“…what?”
“Are we…now, or have we ever been, dead, Scott?”
“I. Don’t think so, no.”
“So we weren’t…we haven’t been…fighting a group of hunters for the last six months who have been, um. Picking us off one by one.”
“Hunters? Stiles, what’re you talking about, man? You’re starting to creep me out.”
“Werewolf hunters, Scott, what other kind of hunters would I mean?”
“No, I just mean…no, there are no hunters, Stiles. Werewolf or otherwise, just the Argents, like always. Why, did you hear something? Chris’ll be pissed if someone’s violated the accords.”
Stiles opened his mouth to interject, and then the last six months caught up with him all of a sudden and he crumpled to the floor. “Scott. Tell me everyone is okay,” he said as fervently as he could with his voice shaking and his eyes filling with tears.
Scott went quiet a moment, then replied, smile audible in his voice, “Yeah, man. Everyone’s fine. Are you okay?”
Rubbing at his hurt leg and sniffling past his tears, Stiles mumbled, “Yeah, just. No, I haven’t heard anything, but. We need to talk. Is Doctor D at work today?”
“Yeah,” Scott replied, audibly sobering. “He’s here. We both are, I mean. You wanna pick up some lunch on the way in? I’m starving!”
Stiles huffed a shaky laugh, and then from downstairs, his dad called out, “Stiles? You up, son? I’ve gotta go to work but if you’ve died from alcohol poisoning I’m going to have to have a very stern talk with you.”
Stiles’ heart twisted in his chest, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe. Dad.
Then he rasped out, “Yeah, Scott, yeah. I’ll be there in a half-hour, okay? I. There’s somethin’ I gotta do first.”
***
“Mr. Stilinski,” Dr. Deaton greeted him with his Mona Lisa smile as Stiles stumbled in through the door of the clinic. “I see you survived last night’s festivities. Good to see you in one piece.”
Stiles gave him a long-suffering look. “Brother, you have no idea. Where’s Sc--“
“Here!” Scott piped cheerfully, appearing from the back room with a big grin and a toss of his bangs out of his face. His hair was longer than Stiles remembered it being, and he was gloriously, handsomely, goofy-smile-ly alive. Stiles launched himself at him, ignoring the twingeing pain in his leg.
“Oof! Stiles, dude,” Scott said, laughing but easily hugging him back, not hesitating a moment. He did that thing that he never admitted to doing but always did when he thought no one would notice - pressed his nose in against Stiles’ shorn hair and breathed deep of him, nuzzling at him a little. Stiles was just so happy to feel him hale (hah) and whole that he didn’t even feel like mocking him a little bit. “You’re really freaking me out, man.”
“Sorry,” Stiles said, pulling back only after another selfish second, curling and uncurling his fingers to try to still the shaking in his hands. “Just…well. That’s what I needed to talk to you about.”
Stiles told them, then, about the hunters from Texas, about having been stuck at the station with Isaac and Derek, about the grenade blast and how he’d been injured and dying and definitely not expecting to wake up to Scott’s phonecall today. Dr. D looked more and more enigmatic and zen as Stiles went on, while Scott just looked more and more confused. Finally he seemed unable to take it anymore, and waved his hands for Stiles to stop.
“Wait, wait. Derek? Isaac? Who’s that? And what train station are you talking about?”
It was Stiles’ turn to look incredulously at Scott. “Seriously? Derek? Derek Hale? Your alpha?”
Scott looked a little offended. “Alpha? Stiles, you know I don’t have an alpha. And definitely no one named Derek. I think maybe you just had a dream, man.” He smirked. “Mayyybe after watching a little too much porn? Derek Hale sounds kinda like a male stripper to me.”
“Oh my god what a terrifying…” Stiles said, before Scott’s words fully sunk in. “Wait. You’re. You’re serious? Derek isn’t…you don’t know Derek?”
“Neither of you do,” Dr. Deaton said somberly, looking at the floor with a soft sigh. “You’ve never met him, to my knowledge. Certainly Scott isn’t in his pack. Derek is not the alpha, either.”
Stiles’ eyes bugged out. “What, Peter’s still alive?” The thought send cold horror trickling down his spine. Motherfucker’d been hard to kill the first time and even harder the second. If they had to kill him again Stiles thought he might cry.
Dr. Deaton was looking at him strangely, though - like he was only just now truly taking Stiles seriously. Stiles kind of wanted to slap him for that, really. At least his Deaton had respected Stiles, even if Stiles hadn’t been able to save him, in the end. “You seem to know a lot about him.”
“I know a lot about a lot,” Stiles said in frustration. “You taught me most of it, as it so happens. Look, if you need to quiz me, go ahead. Or I could just go back and whip you up a little willow and laurel compress with a tincture of mountain ash for helping cure wounds inflicted by an alpha. I know where you keep all the supplies.”
Deaton blinked. Stiles had the singular and sadly fleeting sensation of sweet, sweet victory at, for once, taking the man by surprise. He savored it a moment, then pressed on. “I know that Peter Hale bit Scott six years ago and that we killed him - or, well, Derek killed him, and then he became the alpha.”
The doctor’s expression hardened a bit. “You’ve clearly gotten some bad information, Stiles,” he said. “After Peter bit Scott, he was tracked down and eventually killed by his nephew and niece. Derek did not land the killing blow, however. Laura did.”
Stiles stared at him, mouth agape, for several seconds. “Laura? Laura Hale?”
“Wait, why didn’t I know about any of this?” Scott said, sounding genuinely put out about it, and maybe a little hurt. Stiles knew how he felt.
Deaton had the grace to look slightly constipated, which Stiles took for chagrin. “It was decided that it would be better for you not to be drawn into their family politics. They asked me to help you and keep an eye on you and to let them know if you suffered any ill effects from your link with Peter. But you seemed to be doing fine, and as you had no desire to explore your lycanthropy further, we were all of the opinion that it was best you were taught to control your power first, and be informed of other matters only as necessary.” He sighed. “Argent almost undid all this, of course, by confronting you directly about it when he found out. But he and I discussed it and realized you’d be safest with him and his family.”
“Without talking to me about it at all?” Scott said, voice ratcheting up with every word. Stiles touched his arm comfortingly, incensed on his behalf but needing this not to devolve into a shouting match just now. He rubbed at his face and groaned a little as he frantically tried to digest this information.
“So. So Laura Hale’s alive.”
“Yes,” Doctor Deaton replied, frowning. “I take it that’s unusual for you.”
“Yeah. In my…whatever, world, timeline, she’s dead. Peter killed her to become the alpha so he could heal faster. Of course, it arguably only kicked his crazy up to eleven. I say ‘arguably’ because I can and will argue that his crazy started way before that.”
“So in your version of events, Peter killed Laura, and then Derek killed Peter and is now the alpha? And Scott is in his pack?”
“Yeah,” Stiles replied, then, subdued, corrected himself. “Well. Not now. Now we’re all dead.”
That certainly left an awkward and sucking silence behind it. Stiles always had been good at creating those. Finally Scott put his hand on Stiles’ shoulder, and Stiles jumped a little, before leaning into the touch, letting out a shaky breath. “We were…it was just me and Derek and Isaac left, trapped in the old train station, and the last thing I remember, the last thing we did, was leave the station and walk right into a firing squad. Shooting gallery.” He made an explosion noise, with a vague and yet eloquent hand gesture. “Thing.”
He rubbed at his eyes. “The thing is…the weird thing is that we were talking about this. Not…not this, specifically, I mean, but. About Laura, about how she was supposed to be the alpha instead of Derek. That’s what we were talking about when we…”
Deaton’s face cleared, his Miyagi-esque little smile coming back. Stiles had long ago accepted the sad reality that Dr. D was just always going to be a better Yoda than him. “What exactly were you saying about it?” he asked mildly. Stiles shrugged.
“Derek had…said that it shouldn’t have been him that was the alpha - like, ‘cause he was never trained up for it, y’know? - and that it should’ve been Laura. I told him I was glad it’d been him because I couldn’t imagine another alpha, but that I did wish Laura could’ve been around to make his life less terrible.”
“You used those words? Precisely? That you wished she hadn’t been killed?”
Stiles frowned. “I…guess so. I think so, yeah. What does that--“ Deaton’s raised eyebrow was all it took, and Stiles felt the blood draining out of his face. He flailed out a hand to catch himself on the front counter, and Scott looked at him in alarm, tightening his hand on Stiles’ elbow.
“You’re kidding me,” Stiles said.
“What?” Scott said, frowning in confusion as he looked between the two men.
“I’m surprised I never mentioned this phenomenon to you,” Deaton said mildly, “in your reality, I mean. I know I’ve told you about it in this one.”
“No, you did, I just…death,” Stiles told Scott by way of explanation, choosing to ignore the time paradoxes the good doctor was starting to make him contemplate. His head was hurting enough already. “It’s…there’s all this stuff about death and the gateway between it and life, and how souls generate more electrical energy in their auras when people are in peril and…it all sounded like complete bull to me the first time he explained it to me, and. Well. Up til right now I was still pretty convinced it was.” He made a face at Deaton. “I thought that kind of thing needed intent,” he said dubiously.
Deaton gave an infuriating little facial shrug. “Less so when someone is more primed to channel that kind of energy, as you are, or as I assume you are, all other things being equal between your plane of reality and this one. And you were with your packmates, which intensifies energy fields, too.”
Scott still looked lost, not following Stiles’ Swiss-cheese logic, which Stiles supposed he really couldn’t blame him for. He mentally chewed over Deaton’s theories as he turned to look Scott in the face. “The whole point is that death is magical, in a weird and kind of creepy way, and that magic you do while dying or coming near death is more powerful than it usually is. Sometimes you can even do it accidentally, which…I guess is kinda what happened. I handed the universe a dying wish - that Laura Hale had not died - and the universe gave it to me. Because the universe is kind of a weirdo sometimes, honestly. Not that I’m complaining,” he added quickly, putting his hands up placatingly, like he expected the universe to slap him in retaliation. “I mean…” He swallowed hard, meeting Scott’s eyes again, feeling the emptiness in his heart that had yawned open when he watched his best friend die. His expression must’ve been frightening, because Scott slid his hand up Stiles’ arm to dig his fingers reassuringly into the meat of Stiles’ shoulder. “Hell. I don’t really want to go back to the alternative. I’d like to pretend it was just a terrible dream from here on out, if it’s all the same to everybody.”
“Yeah, I don’t see why you shouldn’t,” Scott said, immediate and emphatic, turning to look at Dr. Deaton for approval. His hand tightened still further on Stiles, possessive, and Stiles wanted to lean into him and just hide his face for a while. His leg still hurt and he felt unsteady on his feet - still waiting, he realized, for this to be the dream, and the real world still to be the horror of those last few months. “I mean. It’s not like it’s reversible, right? Not like the universe or whatever is gonna change its mind?”
“No,” Deaton replied surely, shaking his head. “No, this is…a final kind of thing. Stiles gave his life for this wish, and it just so happened that, in granting it, the universe had to grant his life back, too. It isn’t unheard of; many speculate this could be the origin of the concept of an afterlife.”
Stiles smirked. “Yeah, well. If this were heaven, I’m guessing I wouldn’t have this hangover from hell, would I?”
Deaton huffed a laugh. “Probably not.”
“Alright, then,” Stiles said, heaving another sigh to steady himself, slowly allowing himself to believe that this was the real life and not just a fantasy (and dammit, it must be real, because now he had Freddie Mercury stuck in his head and he was pretty sure heaven didn’t go in for that kind of thing, either). Stiles’ lips pulled up in a grin. “Alright! I’m alive! We’re all alive! We rock! But now what?”
Dr. Deaton raised his eyebrows. “Well, since you’re here now and all, perhaps it would be best if you acquainted yourself with the parts of your life that are different, now, from what you’re used to.”
“Good idea,” Scott said. “I can probably help with that.”
Stiles nodded, then pinned Deaton with a Look. “First things first, though,” he said in his most authoritative tone. It was mostly ineffective against disobedient betas and recalcitrant veterinarians, but he had a feeling he’d be listened to, this time. After all, he’d just come back from the dead. “I think you should fill us - both of us - in on all the wolf stuff you haven’t told us so far.”
***
“Soooo…you and Allison?” Stiles prodded, leaning against the passenger-side door of Scott’s car, the wind from the half-open window cool as it ruffled the collar of his favorite shirt. This shirt was long since toast, in his old life. (It was funny how easy it was becoming, thinking of the former as old and this as new, but the unsettled feeling remained, and Stiles was refusing, for now, to think about why.) “Are you guys…?”
Scott raised his eyebrows, cheeks dimpling as he tried not to smile. “Are we what?” he teased, and Stiles gave him an unimpressed look for deliberately playing dumb. “Are weeee mortal enemies? Ninja assassins? Raising five kids together?”
“Dating, you enormous weirdo, and I’m worried at some of the places your brain took that. Ninja assassins, really?”
“You’re just jealous you’re not a ninja assassin. And yeah, of course.” Yeah, nope, this world couldn’t be that different; there was that dopey smile Stiles knew and loved. Six years of stressful relationship ups and downs and finally permanent ups had not been able to rob Stiles’ Scott of that, either. He guessed that was really the best thing that could’ve happened to him, right that moment; if Scott was still stupidly, ridiculously, illogically in love with Allison Argent, then he was Stiles’ Scott, and the universe was all going to be okay. “We’re, um. I’m pretty sure we’re, y’know. Gonna get married.”
Stiles grinned like an idiot. He had to bite his tongue really hard not to spoil any secrets, like how Scott proposed or how Allison smiled when she said yes. Those were good memories, but they weren’t for here and now. Stiles had the sudden thought that he should write them down, sometime soon, like in a diary, so he didn’t forget. There were some things he couldn’t scrub from his memory fast enough, but he didn’t want to lose everything. He wanted to keep some of them, for his eyes only; it seemed important. He’d do it just as soon as he got a few more important things out of the way.
“Well of course you’re gonna get married, dude. You guys are fated. Shakespearean.”
Scott wrinkled his nose on a laugh. “No no, don’t say that! I’ve had it up to here with our relationship being compared to Shakespeare, god, it’s like no one even read that play, don’t they know what happens?”
Stiles propped his feet up on the dash, watching the edges of town give way to the open, forested surround of the California countryside the closer they got to the Preserve. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I was referring to ‘Much Ado about Nothing,’ which I have decided is pretty much the official theme of my life.”
Scott shook his head, grinning and tapping the steering wheel in a nervous rhythm. “Never read it,” he admitted. “I didn’t think you even liked Shakespeare.”
“I really don’t, but. I got bored on stakeouts a lot, and the high school library always did suck. And if you aren’t Claudio then nobody is Claudio.”
“Oh god, stakeouts?”
They compared notes about the kinds of activities Stiles was used to doing, which weren’t, all told, that different from the sorts of things Scott was used to Stiles doing, really. It was just that Scott was used to doing them with Stiles and Allison, just the three of them, or sometimes with a reluctant Chris Argent joining the fray when absolutely necessary; the major difference seemed to be the frequency with which Stiles had become accustomed to beating off the ever-worsening horde of supernatural nasties compared with how relatively seldom Scott and Stiles and sometimes-Argent did in this reality. Beacon Hills v. 2.0 bore markedly less resemblance to a Hellmouth than Stiles was used to, at least from Scott’s point of view, and he puzzled as they drove about why that was.
The further through the Preserve they went, though, meant the closer they were getting to the Hale place, and the tighter the knots in Stiles’ stomach were pulling. Scott grew more quiet, too, unease settling over them like a blanket. The Hale siblings knew they were coming; Deaton had called ahead to let them know, and to tell them something of what had happened and why the situation had changed. Stiles could only imagine how put out Derek would be about it - not that that discouraged him, but it would be a hurdle they’d have to spend too much time overcoming. To say nothing of Laura and how she might feel about having two strangers thrust into her life, like this; she was a totally unknown entity, really, despite all Derek had told him over the last few years about her.
Strangers. That word rolled around, an ugly, spiked little marble, in Stiles’ brain as they turned off the state route onto the gravel access road hemming the eastern boundary of the Preserve and separating it from Hale land. Stiles wasn’t sure, deep down where he told himself truths and kept them secret from everyone, that he was ready for this. Getting his life back, getting his best friend and his father and the chance at a whole pack again, all of that was infinitely worth any number of sacrifices. But never in his wildest imaginings had Stiles thought he’d be asked to sacrifice Derek. He dreaded in every cell the moment he got out of the car and walked up to the house and met this Derek for the first time, knowing he would see no recognition, no emotion, none of the hard-won affection he’d become not simply accustomed to, but dependent on, there in that last year or so. Stiles had a feeling that no matter how much he braced for it, he’d never truly be ready to see Derek look at him blankly, knowing what had been there only twenty-four hours before.
It was nice, in a way, to get a shock, upon driving up to the Hale property; the house was being rebuilt. The exterior looked to be almost finished, though even from here, a peek through the window showed it still dim and grim inside. The outside of the house was a skeleton of scaffolding and tarpaulin, and a small pop-up trailer had put down roots in the front yard, about twenty feet from the house and linked to it with an arm-thick bundle of electrical cables like an umbilical cord. The whole property was still, unnaturally still, like the forest was holding its breath; Stiles had a sudden memory of Derek telling him that animals hated when local werewolves got stressed out, and often cleared out of the area for days.
Stiles swallowed hard, got out of the car.
He was rubbing his damp palms nervously against the thighs of his jeans and ignoring Scott’s nudging when the door to the trailer opened and Stiles’ breath stuttered out. It wasn’t Derek. All of Stiles’ pent-up worry kind of fell like Jenga blocks, heavy, in his gut; it made sense Laura would come to the door. She was the alpha, after all.
Stiles had always thought, privately, that she didn’t much look like Derek. They both had strong features, but where Derek’s were in his jaw and his nose and around his eyes, Laura’s were her mouth and her cheekbones and her thick, inky eyelashes. She was too severe to be properly thought of as pretty, and she looked like maybe she’d eviscerate you for the thought even if you did have it, though that was probably more the current situation than her actual demeanor.
She was a hell of a lot shorter than Stiles was expecting, that was for damn sure. It was weird to tower over her by almost a foot and be looking down into alpha-red, don’t-fuck-with-me eyes.
Those eyes flicked between him and Scott, and no one said anything for a moment while Stiles felt Scott fighting the urge to bristle beside him. Finally Laura nodded, said in a soft mezzo, “C’mon in. You’re Stiles and Scott?”
“Yeah,” Stiles said, following her up into the cramped space of the pop-up. “That’s us. Um. It’s nice to…to finally meet you,” he said, feeling awkward even as he did, and particularly at the rough note in his voice that made it painfully obvious just how important to him this really was. He’d wanted to meet Laura for a long time, know her, see what kind of person she was and match her up with Derek, see which of the jagged edges Stiles had tried to soften over time were always meant to match up to Laura’s, instead.
She raised an eyebrow at him, which, yeah, okay, Stiles, and gestured for them to sit at the modular kitchen table. Her yearbook photos, Stiles’ only visual record of her, hadn’t done justice to how self-possessed and collected she was. Stiles knew she was only thirty-two, but she carried herself like someone a lot older and more grizzled. Stiles was curious how much of that had always been her and how much of it had been burnt into her.
“I wanted to meet you a lot sooner,” she said, leaning back against the sink and crossing her arms over her chest. “But someone,” she raised her voice pointedly, “thought it would be a bad idea.”
“Deaton told us there wasn’t any reason for it,” came words from just outside the camper’s canvas sides, making Stiles jump and shiver. He jumped again when the door popped open, craning around in his seat for a look at--
It was all there. The plain, flat expression of a man looking on unfamiliar faces, the stubborn set of his jaw that Stiles both loved and hated, the deepening crow’s feet beside his eyes under eyebrows drawn into a scowl that Stiles had learned only through persistence was not actually permanent. The urge to reach out and touch him was so strong Stiles nearly tipped out of the booth, but digging his fingers into the thin seat cushions helped him both to balance and to keep his hands to himself.
He’d been so right about how much it would hurt. He hadn’t quite anticipated Derek looking so physically different. He was still obviously Derek, and still obviously a werewolf (seriously, now that Stiles was in the know, it was a little hard to believe he’d ever thought Derek Hale could be anything but a werewolf; even beyond the scruffiness and the lowering eyebrows, Derek - and Laura too - had a wildness about their eyes, in their posture, that called to mind coiled muscles and lots of teeth). But his frame wasn’t quite so aggressively muscular as Stiles was used to seeing, and he was much more noticeably tanned. He also looked significantly better-fed and groomed than Stiles usually saw Derek. Maybe the most incongruous thing was that he was wearing a plain white t-shirt and jeans - no seasonally-inappropriate leather jacket, no black henleys or dirty, blood-smudged tanks. Just plain shirt, plain jeans, and bare feet. It was like seeing Derek in the softer, quieter moments Stiles had started to enjoy over the last couple of years of their acquaintanceship-turned-friendship-turned-mateship, only he was soft-all-over and not just in his eyes and his voice and his hands in the dark.
Derek gave them a detached, assessing look, then turned his focus to Laura, pursing his mouth in familiar exasperation. “You should have told him no,” he muttered.
Laura snorted. “And drag this out another three years for no reason? Yeah, no.” She turned back to Scott. “We were all going to be introduced when you were--“
“Twenty-five,” Scott finished for her, nodding. “I know. Alan told me.”
“Right. When you’d fully matured and could make a neutral, informed decision about whether you wanted to join our pack or just sign the accord and live here as a resident omega. But my point --“ Here Derek snorted and turned to climb up into the bed at his end of the camper, rummaging through a cabinet and slamming its door unnecessarily hard. “-- My point was that you couldn’t possibly make an informed decision by that point if you didn’t at least know us, so. Consider this a formal introduction.” She took a deep breath, let it out, and turned to Stiles. “What’s your story?”
“Which story? The original story or the revised and annotated edition?”
Laura’s lip quirked, and Derek’s passive-aggressive rustling in the back was momentarily stilled. “How ‘bout you start with the Reader’s Digest version and we’ll come back to the footnotes as needed.”
Stiles glanced over at the curtain-strung cubby where Derek was currently lurking (no change there, then) and licked his lips. “Yeah. I have a feeling you’ll like the ending.”
On to Part 2