Chapter Text
Stiles turns sixteen on a Thursday. His dad has to be at the station late, but when he comes home, it’s with Stiles’s favorite cheese dip and a store cake. They eat nachos together in the kitchen at midnight.
On Friday, he jerks off the second he gets home from school, then gets out his French homework and ignores it in favor of Wipeout Australia. He’s watching a guy in a Whitesnake tank top lose whatever remains of his human dignity when he hears a muffled thud and a yelp of “Fuck.”
When he opens the front door, Scott has one hand up to knock. He’s disheveled and redfaced, trying to balance a cardboard box on one hip.
Stiles looks at it. “You brought me an inflatable pool?”
“What? No, I -- can you please let me in? This is really heavy.”
Stiles steps out and takes the box to protect Scott from himself. It is, indeed, really fucking heavy.
Scott makes him take it all the way upstairs before letting him open it. “The fuck,” Stiles moans as he deposits it on his desk. “This better not be your gravel collection.”
“Remember when my mom took us to see Nightfire and you spent the whole summer pretending you had a Ridged Atramental?”
“That never happened,” Stiles says.
“Just open the box.”
Scott sits on the edge of the bed as Stiles peels off a criss-crossed mess of packing tape, then pries open the top flap.
“Oh my God. No, nuh-uh.” Stiles tries not to be kind of thrilled, and fails hard. He tears the front of the kiddie pool box down the middle, brutally dismembering a smiling child in a yellow swimsuit, and pushes it open. “Holy shit. That looks --”
“Really real,” Scott says happily. “The guy makes them in his garage.”
The replica egg is beautiful, charcoal grey flecked with jade and black freckles. Stiles touches the pebbled shell with two fingertips, then lays his palm flat against it. It feels a little bit warm, like Scott left it in the sun while he was at school. “Did you seriously get this over here on your bike? Why didn’t you just call me?”
“I wanted to surprise you,” Scott says, and he looks so happy about his stupid, embarrassing, awesome birthday present that Stiles comes at him power-hug style, hard enough to knock them both flat against the bedspread.
Scott eats three pieces of Stiles’s cake and goes home. Stiles peels the rest of the cardboard off of the egg and leaves it standing up in its slab of Styrofoam packing for the rest of the night. He keeps touching it while he does his homework, looking at it. He’ll have to hide it if he ever manages to convince a girl to come over -- because, embarrassing -- but it really is cool.
.
Scott works at the clinic all day Saturday and Sunday. Stiles listens to shitty club music and builds his egg a little stand. He doesn’t finish his French homework.
.
Sitting with Stiles on the loser bench at lacrosse practice on Monday, Scott shoulder-bumps him and says, “How’s Cinderella?”
“Die slowly,” Stiles says. Scott is an asshole -- Cinderbelly was an awesome name for an imaginary dragon.
“You totally like it,” Scott says, grinning. “I hope you still have those paper wings in your attic.”
“Keep in mind I don’t need you anymore now that I have a dragon,” Stiles warns him.
At home, he palms the egg in passing as he goes to dump his lacrosse stuff in the closet. It’s still warm, too warm, like maybe it has something built into it to make it seem more authentic. Curious, he inspects it all over, tipping it carefully to check the bottom, but can’t find anywhere to open it up for a battery change.
His dad is out on patrol until late, and the house gets kind of uncomfortably quiet as the purple of dusk sets in. Stiles turns the Discovery Channel on for company and half-watches a documentary about dragon handling in the Australian Special Forces while he does his homework and eats two peanut butter sandwiches and a tube of Pringles, then jerks off a couple of times.
Later, while he’s folding his laundry, he finds himself talking to the egg a little, out loud, like lonely people do with their dogs. Whatever, there’s no one to judge him.
.
On Tuesday, Stiles’s dad gets home in the daylight for once and knocks on Stiles’s doorframe to talk about dinner.
“I don’t know, whatever,” Stiles says.
“Enchiladas it is,” Dad says, and goes to turn away, but then does a double-take. “Whoa, what’ve you got there?”
Stiles swivels his desk chair around to look at the egg too. It’s wearing a Beacon Hills Bumblebees cap, from when he and Scott did Little League. “Present from Scott. I guess he bought it from a guy who makes them. Pretty fuh--uh--freakin’ sick, right?”
“Assuming that’s a positive comment, I agree. That is a very sick egg.” Dad comes closer and lifts the ball cap by the brim, then sets it back down. “Nice pebbling. You know, I worked with a Colombian Red during the Loma Prieta earthquake. She was a great gal. Good nose.” He taps his own, then looks the egg over once more. “That’s some good artistry. Beautiful.”
“Yep,” Stiles says. He touches the egg on his way downstairs. Later, he talks himself through his French homework at it, and then pulls up a Wings of Glory ep on Youtube as he gets ready for bed.
So he’s maybe going through a phase again, shut up.
.
Wednesday is a shitty, shitty day. Stiles sleeps through his alarm while dreaming about being on his knees giving out blowjays in the boys’ locker room and spends two entire, agonizing minutes taking an endless trickling piss through a sleep boner. Coach Finstock asks him who he is, and then starts a story about being stuck in a port-a-potty in a velvet jumpsuit, so Stiles never manages to ask about being allowed to play midfield. As if that weren’t enough, Scott is bummed because his dad is leaving pissed-off messages on the landline answering machine again, so Stiles takes him out for burgers and they go back to Stiles’s place to play Dirt 3.
Scott’s visibly stewing about something. Stiles figures it’s his dad, and that Scott will talk when he’s ready. Or not.
About ten minutes into zombie infection mode, the dam breaks.
“Oh my God, dude, she’s perfect.”
Okay, not dad.
“Do I ask her if she wants to study or is that creepy? I have no idea what to do, dude, help.”
Stiles ramps off of a cargo container directly into a wall like an idiot. “Sure, my pleasure. Maybe first tell me what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Allison! Allison Argent. I have to talk to her but I don’t--”
“Hold on, you mean new girl?”
“Like, I thought I was going to pass out. I got a fear boner when she smiled at me. I cannot be getting fear boners with this girl.”
“Let’s move this off of the subject of your dick and onto the subject of why the fuck don’t you just ask her if she wants to hang out?” Stiles crashes repeatedly against a drainpipe trying to execute a three-point turn. His trunk is flapping now.
Scott is still driving perfectly while he dribbles impotently about what to say, because he’s an asshole.
“Ask her if she wants to go to Lydia’s party with you.”
“I didn’t know she was having one. Wait, did she invite you?” Scott looks so excited for him that it’s embarrassing.
But no. No, Stiles just has an eavesdropping habit. “Just ask her before somebody else does, man. Do it tomorrow. Like as soon as you see her. That way you won’t have time to get nervous.”
“I’m already puking about it now,” Scott groans. He finishes dickwhipping Stiles and they microwave a bunch of hot dogs to take upstairs.
“Hi Cinderella,” Scott tells the egg through a mouthful of processed meat, and Stiles slaps him up the back of the head.
They do their homework together, and then Scott gets his bike out of the Jeep and heads home through the dusk. Stiles jerks off three times and then vacuums while he tells the egg about his day. He doesn’t even feel that stupid talking to it anymore, which is probably a bad sign.
.
Scott’s working on Thursday, and his dad’s not due home until late, so Stiles takes his sweet time picking out the perfect donut assortment and then arranges it on a dinner plate in a pyramid of unfathomable nutritional horror before carrying it upstairs.
Where his egg is broken.
“No,” Stiles cries out miserably, and nearly drops the donuts on the floor. Instead he kneels and sets the plate on the rug, then touches a fragment of shell the size of a saucer. It’s slick inside, with a little snail trail of goo behind it, where it skidded across the carpet, and there’s a weird smell in the room, thick and a little smoky. Maybe the egg was kept warm by a chemical reaction?
Stiles stands up and looks at the ruin of the egg on his desk. At least none of the goo is on his computer, but there’s a thumb drive that’s probably a lost cause.
While he gets a dustpan out of the hall closet, Stiles is a little surprised to discover how sad he is. He grabs a new trash bag, too; there’s no way his egg will ever be the same, but if he gets all the pieces, maybe it can at least be carefully glued back together.
He’s setting one fragment on top of another when he hears a rustle in the closet, followed by a thump.
Great, okay. That makes sense. A burglar broke his egg, and now he’s gonna get murdered. Stiles sets down the eggshell pieces and backs up carefully until he reaches the door, then flees down the hall.
Returning, he has his dad’s taser held out and his cell phone primed with the direct line to Dispatch as he reaches out one toe as far as he can stretch and kicks the closet door open.
There’s no one there.
“And now I’m a crazy person, even better,” Stiles says out loud.
He freezes as a small, distressed sound rises from the pile of laundry against the back of the closet.
Slowly, breathing as quietly and evenly as he can manage, Stiles puts the phone down, crouches, and lifts up a corner of his dirty bedsheets.
“Oh my God,” he exhales voicelessly.
There’s a pale green eye glowering at him, fierce under a heavy, charcoal-scaled brow. Even as he watches, it blinks shut, and the dragonet burrows further under the sheets, disappearing from view.
“Hey, hello,” Stiles says, and slowly sinks back until his ass is on the carpet. “I’m sorry if I scared you.”
The laundry moves, and then goes still again.
“You can stay in there if you want, I guess. Or you could come out. I mean, whatever you want to do, that’s -- God, you must be so confused. Sorry about the... everything.”
Something is soaking through his ass. Stiles touches the carpet with two fingers and sniffs them. It’s that same hot, thick smell, a little like matchheads.
Albumen, right.
“You’re a fire breather, huh,” Stiles says, and the laundry shifts. A dark snout works its way out of a fold in the sheets and sighs. Stiles’s heart is going like crazy. If he’s dreaming, he really hopes his alarm clock isn’t about to go off. “Okay then. I’m gonna finish cleaning up, okay? You just... do whatever. Don’t chew on any of my shoes, please.”
The dragon still doesn’t answer. Stiles is starting to wonder whether it’s not... intellectually disabled. Or deaf, maybe. They usually talk right out of the egg. Sometimes they talk IN the egg.
He finishes gathering up the shell and stashes it carefully in his underwear drawer, then gets a sponge and a bowl of water from downstairs and starts scrubbing albumen out of the carpet. Some of it’s already dried into semi-opaque streaks, but there are splashes by the desk, still tacky and translucent where it’s thicker. Stiles imagines the dragonet working its way out of the egg in utter solitude, only to find itself on a chilly, hard surface, then flopping off onto the floor and scrambling into the closet. He feels briefly, crushingly guilty.
He’s working on a spot by the rolling chair when he realizes the dragonet is watching him around the closet door.
Not wanting to spook it, Stiles continues scrubbing and just looks it over. It’s sturdy -- none of the eely spindliness of the Asian breeds. Strong, wedge-shaped head, set on a thick curve of neck. No spikes, at least not that he can see. It watches him without blinking, jade-green irises startling against its charcoal scales. God, it really looks like a...
“Ridged Atramental,” Stiles murmurs.
At the sound of his voice, the dragonet withdraws back into the closet. It stays in there while Stiles wipes down his desk and takes the bowl downstairs.
Half an hour later, when Stiles is crosslegged on his comforter with Adventure Time on the laptop, he catches movement out of the corner of his eye. He pretends not to notice as the dragonet creeps toward the bed, slightly unsteady on its new limbs. It disappears from his view at the edge of the bed, and then there’s a quiet thump and a brief scrabble against the hanging sheets, followed by a small, unhappy sound.
Stiles sets down the laptop and carefully leans over.
The dragonet stares up at him, looking resentful and piteous.
“Do you want help getting up?” Stiles says.
The dragon just looks at him, so, with painstakingly slow movements, Stiles reaches down and puts his hands around its ribcage.
It humphs testily.
“Okay, sorry,” Stiles says, letting go. He thinks for a minute, then slides down off of the edge of the bed onto the carpet and rolls over onto his back, propping his legs up on the mattress.
The dragonet stares.
“Ramp,” Stiles says helpfully. “Walk up?” He gestures up and down his legs, wiggling his toes.
Instead, the dragonet steps gingerly onto his chest, arranges itself, and settles down, curling its tail around its body.
It’s very, very heavy.
“Okay,” Stiles wheezes. “All right then.”
It’s a little bit of an awkward angle for a detailed inspection, but yeah, that’s definitely an Atramental’s dark scale pattern over its head and neck. Its wings are folded against its back, barely longer than its body, and its horns are just soft little stubs at the back of its skull, set above the dimples of its ears. There’s albumen behind them, where it couldn’t reach with its tongue. Gross.
Gross and awesome.
Stiles is in an agony of longing to touch it, but when he tries to put his hands on its back, it goes stiff and rumbles angrily, so he lets his arms flop out on the carpet while he looks at it and tries not to suffocate under its weight.
Finally, he says, “I am in so much trouble.”
Ignoring him, the dragonet stretches its wings. They look heart-stoppingly vulnerable and new, the light shining blood-warm through the crumpled, velvety membrane to silhouette leaflike vein patterns in the moment before it resettles them.
“Check you out,” Stiles marvels. “Too bad you’re going to get confiscated in like five seconds flat.”
“No,” the dragonet cries, and tumbles off of Stiles’s chest, planting one foot solidly in his crotch as it scrambles under the bed.
Stiles curls into the fetal position around his junk, gasping, “Hey, you can talk.”
“No,” the dragonet says again, and retreats further under the bed, eyes gleaming.
“No what?” The misery of Stiles’s balls is gradually fading. “No... confiscating? Buddy, I’m sorry, but I’m never going to be allowed to keep you.”
“Keep you,” the dragonet repeats angrily, and the shine of its eyes disappears.
Stiles sighs and uncurls, rolling over onto his stomach and putting his face up to the opening between the bedframe and the carpet. The dragonet is curled tightly against the wall, face tucked in, and it doesn’t respond when Stiles tries to coax it out.
Finally, he sighs. “Do you want something to eat?”
“Want a name,” the dragonet says.
“Um,” Stiles says.
The dragonet uncurls and creeps closer to the edge of the bedframe, looking at him with eyes like light shining through leaves.
Because he’s only ever seen eyes like that on his first crush, and because he’s a fucking idiot, Stiles says, “Derek.”
.
Derek eats six hot dogs, four donuts, and an entire packet of bacon, then takes a liquid dump by Stiles’s desk that smells like a car fire and melts the carpet fibers and disappears into the closet in embarrassment, refusing to come out while Stiles cleans up wearing rubber gloves.
Stiles’s carpet has had a rough day.
He goes online and reads up on neonatal Atramental care; there’s an entire forum where firefighters are arguing with each other about charcoal supplements and everyone seems equally certain that everyone else’s methods are borderline abusive. So that’s... helpful.
Stiles goes into the garden shed and gets Derek a handful of charcoal, just to be sure. Derek doesn’t come out from under the laundry while Stiles puts it just inside the closet door, but a few minutes later, he hears crunching.
Scott picks up on the seventeenth try and hiss-whispers, “I’m still at work.”
“Well, why’d you pick up then?”
“Because you kept calling!”
Stiles spins around in his desk chair. “Whatever. Just come over when you get off.”
“I don’t know if I have time.”
“Vomit incident, Scott. Make time.”
“You already cashed that one in over Thanksgiving.”
Stiles stops the chair with his legs and spins the other way. “Fine. Seagull rescue.”
Scott groans.
.
“Why’s your carpet all wet?” Scott stops short in the doorway, eyebrows smushing up. “And where’s Cinderella?”
“Shh,” Stiles says, and crawls over to the closet. He slowly draws the door open. Derek is fast asleep on top of Stiles’s lacrosse cleats.
“What the fuck,” Scott says.
Derek wakes up and snarls, snapping his wings out like he wants to launch himself at Scott’s face.
“Whoa,” Stiles yelps, and closes the closet door. Derek thumps against the other side.
“Is that,” Scott says.
“Yeah.”
“But,” Scott says.
“Yep.”
Scott sits down heavily on the carpet, looking dazed. They stare at each other for a long moment. Finally, Scott says, “Dude. You are so boned.”
“I know,” Stiles says, and as Derek rumbles furiously through the crack under the door, he starts snickering helplessly.
.
Stiles finally coaxes Derek out with a piece of bacon and the promise that Scott is out of the room.
As Derek crunches on the bacon, Scott yells up the stairs, “Is it a boy or a girl?”
“He’s a guy,” Stiles calls back. “He’d be twice as heavy otherwise, so lucky you.” He looks at Derek, gone stiff at the sound of Scott’s voice. “Scott carried you here, remember?”
“No,” Derek grouches, but Stiles already shut the closet door, so he can’t go sulk in there.
“We should call Dr. Deaton,” Scott yells.
“But what if he --” Stiles stops yelling and gets out his phone. When Scott picks up, he says, “What if he reports Derek?”
“You named a dragon Derek?” Stiles can hear the quiet echo of Scott’s voice from downstairs at the same time as the words come clearly through the phone. “Wait, you gave the dragon a name? Oh man, you are double boned.”
“Finger cuffs for real,” Stiles admits.
Derek finishes licking his snout and says, “What is finger cuffs?”
“Uh,” Stiles says.
“Dr. Deaton belongs to Eta Draconis,” Scott says through the phone. “He gets their newsletter in the mail. He won’t report you, especially since you’re bonded.”
“I’m not convinced we’re bonded,” Stiles says, looking down at Derek. “It doesn’t even seem like he likes me.”
“I don’t think that matters,” Scott says.
They don’t call Dr. Deaton. Scott goes home for dinner, and Stiles dozes off while doing homework on his bed, waking up when he feels a hot weight settle against his back.
“How’d you get up here?” he murmurs sleepily.
“Claws,” Derek says, sounding very satisfied.
.
When Stiles gets up in the night, Derek stretches sleepily and follows him into the bathroom.
“Go away, you can’t watch me pee,” Stiles says, but Derek just sits down and curls his tail around his feet, like a cat. They have a short stare-off. Stiles drapes a hand towel over Derek’s eyes before he unzips. Derek rumbles with displeasure, but doesn’t shake it off.
Stiles picks Derek up when they reach the bed. Derek immediately goes limp and sour-faced, dangling from his grip like Spanish moss, but even by moonlight, Stiles can see the little punctures in the side of the mattress, and he really doesn’t want to have that conversation with Dad before it becomes absolutely unavoidable.
Derek really is extremely heavy. As Stiles sets him on the bed, his stomach growls.
“You’re kidding,” Stiles says.
He steals downstairs and quietly microwaves half a package of sausages by the light above the stove. When he gets back upstairs, Derek is already asleep.
.
It’s raining when he wakes up, the kind of chilly grey that could be six AM or three in the afternoon. It turns out to be just after seven, and Derek is a hot huddle against his belly. He’s watching Derek’s wings twitch in his sleep with Dad knocks on his closed door and says, “You up?”
Derek’s eyes snap open, and he looks like he’s gearing up for a snarl, so Stiles clamps a hand over his snout and whispers, “Shh.” Then he flips the comforter over both of them and says, louder, “Not really.”
Dad opens the door halfway and leans in. “I’ve gotta be at the station in twenty, but there’s breakfast downstairs when you want it.”
“Thanks.” Stiles can feel Derek’s hot breath whuffing out between his fingers, but Derek stays quiet. When Stiles hears his dad’s car starting, he lets go.
Downstairs, there’s a covered omelet -- mushrooms, way to go Dad -- and Stiles eats it with his fingers while he microwaves the rest of the sausages for Derek. Then they watch two episodes of Wings of Glory while Derek crushes Stiles’s legs and continues to refuse any and all Stiles-initiated contact.
Just after eleven, Stiles three-points his second Dr Pepper can into the wastebasket and says, “Okay, problem. I have lacrosse practice in an hour. If I leave you here alone--”
“No,” Derek says angrily.
“--are you going to completely fuck up my life?”
Derek glowers mutinously from beneath his brow ridges. Stiles takes that as a yes. He drums his fingers on his thighs and tries to shift his legs, which Derek fails to appreciate, expressing his resentment with a wince-inducing squeeze of claws, but it’s either that or the more pressing annoyance of Stiles’s legs rotting clean off from lack of blood flow.
Derek does his level best to obstruct Stiles’s way upstairs, weaving in front of his legs like a huge, pissed-off cat and emitting displeased growls. He then climbs on top of the duffel bag Stiles pulls out of the closet and refuses to move, hanging on with his claws so that the bag dangles from his feet when Stiles tries to lift him off of it.
Stiles puts him back down, then frowns. “Wait.”
.
“You brought him?”
“Keep it down,” Stiles says, hefting the duffel bag onto the bench. “What was I supposed to do? My dad’s going to be home before practice lets out, and it’s not like I could tell Derek to be quiet and hide. I don’t even think he understands most of what I say. He doesn’t use complete sentences or anything.”
“Neither do you,” Derek mutters in the bag. “I didn’t realize it was necessary.”
Stiles sees his own expression on Scott’s face, mouth hanging open. He closes it, then bends over the bag and whispers, “Okay, sorry. Please stay very quiet until I get back.”
Derek humphs. Stiles figures that’s probably the best he’s gonna get, so he toes his shoes off and jams them into his cleats.
On the loser bench, he can’t stop fidgeting. Finally, Scott says, “Just go check on him.”
“I can’t. What if Finstock taps me to play?”
Scott just looks at him pityingly, but Stiles lives in hope, so it’s not until practice is over that he realizes Derek is missing.
“That’s not good,” Scott says, looking at the duffel bag, crumpled on the floor beneath the bench.
“Truly, you’re a man of perception,” Stiles says through his teeth.
“Should we... call his name?”
“No!” The locker room is filling up with other guys, shoving amiably at one another and stripping off gear. “No, just help me look around. How far would he have--”
“Hey,” Jared says from the next row. “Someone opened up my backpack.”
“Looks like an animal,” Danny says. Stiles hears the sound of a zipper. “Look, see the toothmarks?”
“My lunch bag is gone,” Jared gripes.
Scott looks at Stiles and mouths, Derek!
Stiles mouths back, No fucking shit.