Chapter Text
Washington wasn't like California. It had actual weather, storms that moved in and moved out, humidity that melted the skin off the bones, or felt like it anyway. It was late spring, so the hill the Hale pack had converted to a den was green on the outside and damp on the inside. The trees were in bloom and mostly green except for the dogwood and the random almond tree that had probably been planted by somebody's pet squirrel. Everything clung to the air, every smell and every taste. But Stiles was getting used to it. All of it, even the sounds, from the birds in the trees over his head to the people elsewhere in the yard and the weird sounds of the building that surrounded it. He was better.
He was still in werewolf jail... But he was better.
The heightened senses thing was both a curse and a blessing in werewolf jail. It was something Stiles used to keep himself safer, a few times he had helped other pack members, and for the most part it paid off. People found it hard to sneak up on him, fewer surprises when he could hear them approach, and what he couldn't catch, he had Derek for. He could tolerate the smell of jail-dank humanoids alright when it kept his head attached to his shoulders a while longer.
Stiles knew more about the jail after a month away from home. He spent his time with the Hale pack, with the people who still knew how to be human. Talia Hale was the alpha there, alive and well and one crafty bitch when she needed to be to protect what was hers. Stiles was hers, because he was Derek's, and as weird as it seemed, that was the only way to put it. The general population of the Sanctuary was a crowd of about a hundred and fifty people and the thing they all understood was territory. Hale pack was about fifteen people strong, they looked out for each other, and more often than not they were the answering force to the bullies in the yard. People stayed away from the hill with the trees in the center of the yard because it was the pack's territory. Stiles liked it there. He felt safe there and he could see trees instead of cement walls. It was as close to home as he could get in a prison.
There was also something pretty damn awesome about making out with the background noise of a breeze through the trees above their heads instead of the harsh, metallic noises of the cell block. He and Derek were both happier outside, as long as it wasn't raining. That had some drawbacks, because they weren't exactly exhibitionists and nobody liked their walk in the trees tarnished by public sex. But there was very little privacy in a prison built to contain werewolves and anybody could walk by their cell, night or not, and it wasn't always at the front of their mind to behave properly in public spaces. Stiles had learned that he could get away with a lot without shedding a single piece of clothing. That was fun. As long as nobody made them walk for a long while afterwards, anyway. They could cuddle it out, sleep it off against Stiles' favorite ancient tree with the huge roots to hide in, and enjoy a nap in the safety of Hale territory.
Other times it was an actual pain and Stiles put real thought into the idea of changing his definitions of private spaces. Werewolves and their super-senses had nothing on his lately and sometimes he didn't want to stop just to keep from offending somebody else's nose. When Derek had both hands under his waistband and kept tugging their bodies closer, and Stiles had finally managed to mark the underside of Derek's chin, stopping the fun to relocate was the last thing either of them wanted.
Stiles grumbled protest when Derek eased back, his way of saying he was too close to the point of no return. He was stronger and fought a whole different set of instincts than Stiles so he didn't mess around with that. They settled down when Derek needed to, which was a complete reversal from only a week earlier. With the sentinel thing working both for and against him, Stiles had zoned out a few times when they first got close, so personal limits were mutually respected. He had worked too hard to be able to handle the sensory overload of just making out. Skin against skin was his new favorite thing but it had actually nearly killed him the first time they tried it.
So with the white flag raised, they pulled back; Derek's hands went to the safer territory of Stiles' sides, Stiles leaned his weight against his forearms on the tree behind Derek and rested his forehead to Derek's.
"Is this, like, tantric? I heard about it but didn't devote much of my internet time to it, and now we don't exactly have the net..." Stiles voice was quiet and rough but it wasn't like Derek had a hard time hearing him. He closed his eyes like he was biting back a laugh and moved his head just slightly in a negative.
"No... It's being careful," he said.
"Yeah, it's annoying," said Stiles. Derek gave a slight nod, foreheads still touching. Stiles almost kissed him but the jerk slid his hand over to pinch his nipple through his shirt and that was just dirty pool. Stiles backed off, hand protectively over his abused sensitive parts and sat on his knees still between Derek's. He could have gotten some epic retaliation but Derek knew it and was expecting it and there was no fun in that.
Then Stiles frowned because he hated his brain sometimes. "If claws and bites can make a werewolf, what kind of STD are we dealing with here? Cuz they don't sell condoms. I asked."
"Oh my god, Stiles..." Derek reeled forward like Stiles really had gone for the low blow and he had to carefully climb out from between the tree roots to safety.
"What? It's a valid question," Stiles replied. He had recovered somewhat quickly after that. "It's not like I really want to go ask your mother. Or mine."
The look Derek leveled at him then said they were both completely out of the danger zone of ripping off each other's clothes in public. Mission status: accidentally accomplished.
"It's a valid question," Derek agreed. "But your timing needs work."
Satisfied, Stiles shrugged it off. "It could have been a lot worse," he pointed out. He was entirely sincere about it and Derek's face crinkled up in another quiet, near silent laugh, like he was afraid of laughing out loud. Stiles wanted to knock him over and get back to the kissing and the touching but that wouldn't solve the whole public-indecency-around-their-mothers problem. Small detail that now he worried about werewolf STDs because his brain was a dirty place that had somehow developed a healthy fear of germs over the years. Prison was the least useful place to worry about safe sex, ever, but there he was, worrying about it.
"Damnit, we just got through the zone outs," Stiles complained, rubbing at his face, frustrated. Derek got carefully to his feet.
"And you brought this on yourself," he replied. He still looked uncomfortable but he stood near Stiles to offer a hand up. "Showers."
That was a brilliant idea and Stiles signed up for it immediately.
***
The world had changed since she died. It was weird, but colors seemed more vibrant, the smells that hung on the dry summer air somehow more distracting, and every sound had an echo to it, like it was too loud. Some of it her brain just didn't want to process, resulting in headaches that pain killers couldn't touch. Allison Argent spent a lot of time hiding behind dark sunglasses that had nothing to do with any need for a disguise and everything to do with a need for peace and control in her own mind. It was a mild annoyance in the long run, but it was very noticeably new.
Despite the dark glasses on her face at sunset, she recognized the bright red hair of her best friend across the parking lot. Allison broke into a wide smile and then a run. She collided with Lydia Martin in a long missed hug amid a squeal of laughter that hid something more sad. She hung on tight, determined not to be the first to let go.
She wasn't, because a moment later, their hug was wrenched tighter by a third person joining in.
"Scott!" Lydia's complaint was from surprise, and Allison guessed a little pain because Scott had trapped them both in tight. He was all smiles, like she remembered, but when he pulled away there was an anger there that didn't fit.
She didn't find out why it was there until fifteen minutes later, after answering all their questions of where had she been for three months and why hadn't she come back yet and was it safe to be seen so close to Beacon Hills and a dozen other things that seemed suddenly trivial. Their news was so much worse.
"You let your father put Stiles in prison?"
Okay, so it wasn't her most coherent moment but Allison was shocked. "Stiles? Your best friend."
"I didn't let him-"
"Allison, come on," interrupted Lydia, rolling her eyes. "His dad's a federal agent very intently focused on all things unnatural in our tiny town. Somehow Stiles was the only weird he could find proof of. Really, that's luck. If you think about it..."
"Not really, as he would have a hard time arresting half the town if he ever found out anything worthwhile, " said Allison.
"Yeah, he would, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't try it," replied Scott. The angry set to his jaw was definitely thanks to his dad. Allison frowned at her friends.
"Dad said it was important but he wouldn't tell me why, or what was up. Please tell me that means you're working on something to fix this," she said.
"Well, I'm not sure that fix is quite the right word," said Lydia. "Have you seen our criminal justice system? It's too huge and too broken-"
"Not what I meant, Lydia..."
"Right. So then we do have something we want to try, and it might work-"
"But it's also more than a little insane and there is absolutely no way it will work," Scott cut in. "Impossibility factor of werewolves times ten."
"Werewolves are real, so it's possible then," said Allison. Scott nodded.
"In theory," he said. "But you didn't know werewolves were real until you met one. Kinda like how we have no way to know if this will work until we do it."
It sounded fair so Allison agreed.
"What are we doing?"
Lydia shifted, checked her nails, her fidget a tell that she wasn't entirely comfortable with the question.
"Theoretically we're conducting a prison break."
For a long moment, all Allison could do was stare. Her headache throbbed behind her temples. It had to be a joke, right? Stiles wasn't present, but it was about him, so maybe Scott was trying to play prankster in his friend’s name.
But then Scott pulled out out a ruled notebook, each page covered in either notes or glued in pictures, and handed it over. He nodded toward it.
"That's our ideas so far," he said. "They just... need work."
"Need work?" echoed Allison. Lydia huffed.
"It's not like they tell you how to do this stuff on Wikipedia, Allison. We're guessing."
Allison stared at the book in her hands, the shock not lessened much. If this was all they had, there was no way any of them were seeing Stiles alive ever again. They didn't just need work, those plans needed a miracle.
***
After the shower, Stiles was clean and the senses all got a reboot. He had to readjust a little because everything was brighter, louder, smelled stronger after the water rinsed off the grime. Showers were among his favorite things, aside from the absolute lack of privacy and the cold water, which he hated them for, but they gave him a brief reprieve from the constant sensory input. He and Derek headed for the cafeteria for dinner after, and they stood in line with everybody else to get it. It was a regular routine. Their lives had quickly become a pattern. They ate a meal with the Hale pack. They visited with their moms and with Jim, their old roommate who was now so much happier without them in his space, and they went to their cell to sleep. Or occasionally to not-sleep until they passed out.
Tonight was a not-sleep night, their afternoon's fun not quite out of their systems. Derek pinned Stiles to the wall in their small space yet they still both ended up half out of their clothes and barely remembered to bother breathing. There were more important things to be doing, or tasting, or feeling, all at once.
Stiles hadn't zoned in almost two weeks. He was learning how to control it, how to keep away from it. Getting intimate with Derek wasn't a trigger for him anymore. Normally Derek made his senses level out, he wasn't so excitable now that he and Derek had spent an entire month together without killing each other. But something happened that night. He felt the dials slipping and ignored it because he had gotten used to that happening with Derek. But they slipped too far and he had to pull back. Concerned at the shift, Derek let him.
"You okay?" Derek asked. Stiles remembered nodding his head, fighting to turn down the volume. Then there was a loud clatter from somewhere else in the cell block. He zoned so hard he saw white and it came out of nowhere.
***
The zone outs were weird to see. They were almost frightening in a way, to see someone just freeze up and disconnect from reality. Derek knew what they looked like and had an idea how to handle them, but they still threw him for a loop for a few seconds until he sorted out what was going on. In the dark of their cell it was harder to know for certain by sight alone and he had to listen, heard the way Stiles' heartbeat had sped up to twice the usual. His breathing got spastic, like he sometimes forgot how to breathe altogether and his body would kick out air at the last second.
Instinct was to comfort through touch, but Stiles was overloaded by touch in the first place, with noise added in. Stiles was fine until the noise so Derek was betting the noise sent him over the edge, which meant his sound perception was up too high.
"Stiles? Where'd you go?" Derek kept his voice at a whisper, just enough to be heard but still quiet enough that it would have to be chased down. He ducked to get under the bed, to the backpack with the herbs and spices and godawful smelly shit that could help bring a sentinel's senses back to normal the same way. Stiles didn't so much as twitch in response to Derek's voice. That wasn't usual. The only reason Derek was in the Sanctuary at all was because Stiles responded to his voice over the phone when he was in a zone. That couldn't be a good thing.
When Derek turned around, Stiles was gone. That was disturbing. It was creepy. Stiles was completely disconnected when he was in a zone, there was never anyone home. So who was running the show if he could suddenly take off now? The only bright side was that they were in a prison, so it wasn't like he could get far. Derek followed him out into the hall, backpack over his shoulder. He didn't recall anything like this in Blair Sandburg's "How to train your Sentinel" thesis and he had been through the entire text at least twice in the past month. He wasn't sure how to get through if just talking to him had sent Stiles running away.
The split-level cell block narrowed into a short hallway, formed by the walkway that connected the upper cells to the stairs. The hall and the stairwell both let out onto the cafeteria. It was one of four blocks like that; two on the north side of the cafeteria and two on the south. The blocks went nowhere, they fed into the cafeteria like a central hub, and that was it. There were heavy locked doors on the end of the cell blocks that were guarded by gas chamber anterooms and on the other side of those were guards with an arsenal. There was absolutely nothing to be gained by Stiles' field trip, but he headed blindly south, toward a wing Derek hadn't ventured into yet. It smelled burned and hurt his senses so he wasn't sure how Stiles could handle it.
To his further surprise, Stiles stopped in the hall and pushed open a door. Derek hadn't seen the door because it had no equivalent on the north wing, yet Stiles knew exactly where it was. Derek didn't like it. He was done following the leader and hurried to catch up as Stiles disappeared into the wall. It took Derek a few seconds to adjust from the dimmed lighting of the cafeteria to the near pitch black of the stairwell Stiles had found.
The smell was strongest down here, of fires and dead things, and it churned Derek's stomach. He'd had his fill of fires years ago.
"Stiles!" He didn't lower his voice, let it echo, because he wanted something to get through and fast. Stiles wasn't running anymore but he hadn't stopped moving. This lower cell block was burned out and torn up, no windows because of the low ceiling, and the end of the hall was different than any of the other wings. It ended at a brick wall, not a reinforced door that opened to a gas chamber. Stiles stopped and stared at the wall, blank, zoned. It was dark in this wing, all but black with the only light being the faintest glow from what moonlight made it down the stairwell from the upper floor's windows. Derek could hardly see. He relied on sound more than light and stepped into Stiles' space. A moment later, Stiles' heart rate slowed.
"Are you back?" Derek asked, careful with the volume. He heard Stiles' breathing hitch and then gasp as he came back online. There was coughing and swearing as Stiles startled himself fully out of the zone. Derek set a steadying hand to his shoulder, tried to calm him down. He saw light reflect enough to light up amber eyes and then disappear as Stiles faced him.
"You okay?" Derek asked.
"What the hell-" Stiles cut himself off as he looked around.
"Don't know. I was kind of hoping you could tell me." Derek rubbed at his back, worried by the fear from Stiles' scent.
"I- no clue," said Stiles. He caught at Derek's arm, just as blind as Derek, and stared out at the dark around them. "I was here before. Talia locked me down here when she wanted you to stay away."
"I'd love to know why you're down here now," Derek replied, sincere but nonetheless fighting impatience. "But upstairs would be smarter."
Stiles went still for a moment. Then he caught Derek's hand and started walking back toward the stairs at the other end of the wing. "I want to go to the den. Something's... Weird."
In full, however silent, agreement, Derek just nodded his head in the dark as he followed closer.
***