Chapter Text
Stiles begins to drift off in the ambulance. He is almost fully asleep when he feels a sharp sting in the sensitive nerves of his inner elbow and opens his eyes to look down at his arm. The paramedic that is riding in back with him is inserting an IV catheter, clipping the end for a few moments while he prepares a bag of IV fluids.
“We called ahead to the hospital when the city workers found you,” the paramedic explains. “They said to immediately start fluids on anyone we found.”
Stiles nods. It’s to try and stabilise his vitals incase they’re hypothermic. “I thought we were going to die,” Stiles admits, watching as his IV line is uncapped and hooked up to the bag of IV fluids. The paramedic tapes it down a second time before picking up his clipboard to return to his paperwork. He glances up at the vitals machine every now and then, when Stiles would shift and upset the electrodes on his chest. The beeping from the monitor that was measuring his heartbeat was relaxing in an odd way, and he almost started to fall asleep again.
After a few moments of silence the paramedic looks up from his paperwork. “You two are lucky that you didn’t,” is all he says. Those words give Stiles chills as he thinks about the homeless he sees every day, the ones who truly have no place to go and might not have made
it to a shelter. They spend the rest of the ride in silence.
At the hospital there are nurses waiting for Stiles with a private room open. He bypasses the emergency department and wonders if Derek is there yet. He isn’t aware of the fact that Derek is being wheeled in right in front him. They’re separated when Stiles is taken towards his room. The nurses seem concerned enough about his well being to work fast - he’s unstrapped from the gurney, his IV bag moved to a pole attached to the hospital bed and then he’s lifted by the paramedics onto the bed. They leave with the stretcher and the door closes, leaving him with just the nurses.
“What happened last night?” asks one of the nurses as she starts to undress Stiles. His clothing is still damp and a bit crunchy, probably frozen. It’s a bit awkward but he’s too cold to care right now so he just lets them do what they need to do. When they need to take his jacket and tee-shirt off, one of the nurses takes his IV bag down and passes it through the sleeve of his thin jacket and then the sleeve of his teeshirt before undressing him. They leave him in his underwear before coming back with a hospital gown that they dress him in.
“I was trying to go get some things before the storm got worse and my Jeep got stuck in some snow,” Stiles tells them, and his mouth feels funny. He sounds drunk. He tries again, focusing on not slurring his words. “I tried to dig it out but it wasn’t working. A neighbour helped and I kind of hit his car when I got out.”
The nurse who was putting a thermal blanket on Stiles smirked a little. “You ‘kind of hit his car’ when you got out.. of what, the snow?”
Stiles’ mouth still feels weird and he still feels slightly drunk but he keeps trying to talk anyway. It’s a good distraction from the fact that as his body is thawing out, he’s really starting to feel crummy. “Yeah, I guess I accelerated and slammed right into his Camaro. I uh… really killed the engine.”
“A Camaro…” the other nurse says, whistling softly. “I hope your neighbour really likes you - if I was driving a Camaro and someone hit me…”
“You would start screaming at him, throwing a diva fit,” the first nurse teases, hooking Stiles’ thermal blanket up and then giving him two regular hospital blankets on top of it. When she’s done, she looks down at Stiles.
“I’m Trudy, and I’ll be your nurse for the rest of the morning and until this evening. Lisa here is working the front desk so if you press this button - “ and Trudy lifted the little red button attached to a white cord, setting it down within Stiles’ reach. “It will ring at the desk and put you through to Lisa. If you need anything, I’ll come in.”
Stiles nods, starting to feel drowsy again.
“I’m going to come back in a few minutes to hook you back up for an ECG and then keep you hooked up for vitals. After that I’m going to draw some blood and every twenty minutes I’ll be in to check your temperature,” Trudy continued, fixing Stiles’ blankets. “Your clothes and ID will be put in a plastic bag for you, in case you’re looking for them.”
“Okay,” Stiles murmurs, shifting around under the thermal blanket before finding a comfortable position that doesn’t pull on the IV in his arm. By the time the nurses leave he is already fast asleep.
Each time that Stiles’ nurse comes in to check vitals or his temperature, he briefly wakes up but almost immediately falls back to sleep. At one point, before leaving his hospital room, she dims the lights, which helps Stiles stay asleep through the rest of his checks.
When he finally wakes up it is sometime in the evening. He smells food and he feels gnawing hunger pangs in his stomach. He doesn’t remember when he last ate except that it was sometime two days ago; probably dinner before he went to bed. He doesn’t remember having eaten breakfast before going out to get supplies, but he also finds his memory of the last day and a half rather foggy, so who knows. Nonetheless, he is surprised that he has gone this long without eating and only _now_ was feeling hungry.
As if on cue, a tray is brought it and set down on the adjustable table that is wheeled over to Stiles’ bed. The server takes the lid off of his meal and opens the plastic container of cutlery for him before leaving. Stiles sits up a bit and starts to eat in the dim lighting of his room. He’s feeling a lot better though his toes have a funny chilly feeling and he feels nasally, like he’s about to get a cold.
The hospital food is bad as it is in California: spongey ‘breaded chicken’ and mashed potatoes that look like they came out of a TV dinner. There’s flavourless green beans in some kind of zesty dressing and for ‘dessert’ he has a tapioca pudding cup. They gave him orange pekoe tea and a black coffee to drink, with some little sugar and creamer packages. He eats the food because he’s hungry and drinks a bit of the coffee, leaving it black, before laying back down. He just wants to sleep and for awhile he does, rousing when the tray is taken away and again when it’s shift change and his night nurse comes in to check vitals and introduce herself.
The rest of the night isn’t very eventful. Eventually the night doctor has Stiles’ thermal blanket removed and he’s given a thick hospital blanket that has been warmed and the lights are turned off entirely. He doesn’t mind and sleep comes easy just like it has all day. He briefly thinks about his cat and makes a mental note to try and get in touch with Derek to make sure that the poor thing is fed and okay.
In the morning Stiles wakes up to the feeling of someone watching him and he finds Derek sitting in the chair beside his bed, a magazine in his lap. He doesn’t seem too focused on it though.
“You got out early,” Stiles tells him and Derek looks over at Stiles before closing the magazine and setting it aside.
“They discharged me in the evening,” he admits. “You were asleep when I came by.”
Stiles nods a bit. “Why did you come back? You didn’t have to.”
Derek shrugs one shoulder. “I figured you needed clothes for when they discharge you and I wanted to let you know I fed your cat.” Upon realising that it sounds like he broke into Stiles’ apartment he quickly clarifies, “You left your keys in my jacket so I let myself in. Sorry.”
“Did you go through my underwear drawer for clean boxers?” Stiles asks, smirking.
“No," Derek says slowly, lifting an eyebrow. "I expect you to go home commando.”
“That might be cold,” Stiles tells him as he stretches out in the hospital bed, thankful that his body seems to have finally returned to a normal temperature. He feels too hot under all of the blankets but the hospital gown was only tied up at the very top and he can feel it bunched up at his waist under the blankets.
“Speaking of cold, the landlord said they don’t expect power back to the building for another week. The Red Cross was offering to help people who had nowhere else to go but I didn’t know when you would be discharged from the hospital..”
Stiles nods. “So I’m shit outta luck if they discharge me before the power is back on.”
Derek leans back in his chair, watching Stiles. “Not really. I packed myself some stuff and booked a hotel room after I got home from the hospital. I dropped my stuff off and checked in today.”
Stiles wasn’t following. “Okay?”
“I paid for a two bed hotel room,” Derek tell him. “Your doctor already came in. He thought I was your dad and so he told me that you’re being discharged around noon today.”
“You paid - wait, you paid for a hotel room for us?” Stiles asks, as if he cannot believe what Derek had just said - and he couldn’t. “Up until yesterday we were kind of strangers, isn’t this weird to you?”
“You spent a night in the back seat with me,” Derek tells him. “I think we went past the point of boundaries and strange.”
Derek is right: it isn't like Stiles has anywhere else to go. “What about my cat? I can’t just leave him behind.”
“That’s why I found a hotel that lets you bring animals. I said you would be coming by sometime with your cat," Derek tells him and Stiles can't help the melty feeling he feels inside. Here was his neighbour, whom he had been convinced hated him, going above and beyond three times now. Four if you counted him feeding the cat and bringing him clothes.
"I'd be careful," Stiles warns. "Keep acting like my personal Superman and a guy might get the wrong idea."
It was apparently the wrong thing to say because Derek looks a bit flustered, and like he was having an internal oh shit I said something wrong moment.
Before Stiles can try and deflect the sudden awkwardness between them, the door to his hospital room opens and in came his doctor, along with what Stiles guessed was an intern, unlucky enough to be pulled in during a snowstorm. The doctor was looking at his clipboard and making a face. Stiles could guess why.
"Just call me Stiles," he tells the doctor. "Don't even try and pronounce it."
# # #
Stiles doesn't bring much to the motel - he brings his iPad for some games, his laptop so they could have something to watch (though he isn't sure that Derek is even into half the shows on his Netflix queue), some clothing and toiletries. He adds in a few more cat things, toys mostly, as well as food and his food and water dishes. He must’ve looked stupid the way he was packed up and leaving the apartment.
It is eerily quiet on the walk to the elevator bank. Stiles guessed that almost everyone in the building has long since moved onto staying somewhere else, and the lack of cars in the underground parking proved just that.
As they load Stiles’ things into the rental, he sets his cat’s carrier on the floor of the back seat and climbs into the front passenger seat himself. He’s lucky that his cat sleeps away all of the car rides it has ever been in. Some cats, he’s heard, suffer motion sickness and he isn’t sure if Derek would maim him for his cat puking in the rental. So far, nothing has been said about the state of the Jeep and Camaro. He would probably find all of that out in the coming days as more businesses were able to open.
The drive to where they are staying is as quiet as the walk to the elevators and finally Stiles looks over at Derek. “Okay.. what?”
Derek looks over then, lifting an eyebrow, but Stiles isn’t about to have a conversation with Derek Hale’s eyebrows.
“Why the silence? Are you pissed about the Camaro? I’m sure my insurance will cover it.” Stiles isn’t actually sure of that but he doesn’t want to say it right now.
“Are you stalking me?” Derek finally asks, focused on the road rather than looking over at Stiles. The roads are bad, he needs to focus.
Stiles laughs. He doesn’t have control over it, it just happens.
“Why the hell would I stalk you?” He doesn’t mean it to come out as offensively as it does but Derek still bristles and Stiles waves his hands. “Not that you’re not stalk-worthy, you’re definitely the kind of guy I’d go out of my way to bump into except on the days that you’re trying to be scary---
“Stiles--“ Derek cuts in, and immediately Stiles slows down. “Did you know I used to live in Beacon Hills?” he asks, once Stiles seems to have settled enough that Derek can get a word in edgewise.
The surprise on Stiles’ face is enough to show Derek that no, Stiles does not know who he is. “You did?”
Derek nodded once, focusing ahead again. “I lived there with my family up until a couple of years ago.”
“Two people living in the same place for the second time is coincidence,” Stiles tells him. “At least with this. I didn’t even know your name until I saw it on the mailboxes.”
“Your dad is the sheriff, right?” Derek asks, turning on the signal so they could turn and waiting for the car in front of them.
Stiles nods, and now he feels a little bit stalked. “Yeah, how did you know?”
“Your ID in your wallet says your name. I recognised the surname.”
For a few moments Stiles grows quiet, looking out the window as Derek makes his turn and they speed up a bit, now on more cleared out roads. Where they’re staying is likely ahead, according to the GPS in Derek’s rental.
“We’re you in trouble with the law?” Stiles finally asks, once they had parked and were retrieving his things.
Derek snorts softly. “No, I wasn’t in trouble with the law. My family died,” he tells Stiles, closing the trunk to the car with more force than is necessary. “Your dad was one of the first officers to arrive.”
They don’t say much after that - Stiles settles into his side of the room and spends some time with his cat, whom he hasn’t seen in awhile. When it’s time for dinner, Derek goes to get take-out and Stiles settles into the second bed with his cat sprawled across his chest, laptop in his lap. He connects to the public wifi and immediately does a Google search for Hale family death, Beacon Hills California and begins to read all of the articles that pop up in his search results…