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Erica pushed open the door to the hostel room with a flourish that the old wooden door wasn’t precisely used to, given its impact and reverberating after hitting the wall behind it. “Aaaaaaaaa look at it! It’s so cute!”
“This is gonna fit five whole people? In three beds?” Boyd was skeptical at best, and then looking at the size of the beds, he was pretty vindicated. “When three of us are over six feet tall?”
“I’m almost six feet tall!” Stiles argued, his duffle bag soaring into the room and landing on a bed. “Called it!” -until it bounced onto the floor.
“Cool Stiles is on the floor I get this bed.” Isaac, ever the instigator of problems with Stiles, muscled his way in and flopped on the bed previously claimed by the spark. He looked up to give Stiles a smug smile of victory, challenging him to try and stop him.
Stiles scrabbled across the room to immediately duel for the bed, a battle he was sure to lose given that Isaac was a werewolf, but he’d never backed down from it before and wasn’t going to break tradition now.
“I literally don’t care.” The statement from their Big Bad Alpha was punctuated by the massive supply suitcases he was hauling up the steps. With strength comes responsibilities and having to carry all the shit he said was necessary. It sucks to be Derek. “Just shut up and pick one.”
Boyd was setting luggage around so everyone could enter. Despite the size of the beds, him and Erica together was considered a given. That left two beds between Stiles, Derek and Isaac, where Stiles would eventually pass out from a chokehold or something and be deposited on the final one. “Well where are you gonna sleep? You’re the odd one out.”
“I. Literally. Don’t. Care.” Derek thrust the suitcases into the room and looked around. Four whole walls, lock on the door worked, beds not inhabited by monsters? Good enough. “Don’t be divas.”
“I’m not being a diva. I just want-“ Stiles was being sat upon by the enormous lanky wolf, because they were permanently children. “-A bed!”
“Then go to that one!” Isaac was winning, he didn’t care how much Stiles writhed like a centipede, he wasn’t winning this one.
“NEVAH”. Came the muffled reply from Stiles, head shoved into the bedspread.
They had to head up to the north of Oregon in search of what was being described as a storm god by some rather imaginative locals, but eight sightings of ball lightning in the span of one rather drizzly April was enough to pique their interests.
“Anyone feel like being productive?” Derek chucked a book at Isaac and Boyd, and they got to work after only a moderate amount of grumbling.
-----
“Fucking storm god. Punkass storm god.” Whined a pathetic spark, being deposited onto the final bed by Boyd, who had carried him in there. “I call a ban on fighting anything called a GOD from here on out. So sayeth the Stiles.” He was bruised and his hair was sticking up at every angle even more than usual, but more notable was how his clothes seemed just a bit singed. “Y’all gotta call me Iroh now.”
“Shut up.” Derek strode in the room, half of what was once a decent gray Henley now charred with a large Lichtenberg figure seared into his chest slowly fading. He was in an incredible amount of pain, and was standing upright through sheer force of will. And maybe a refusal to look weak in front of his betas. “Shut up and find out how we kill it.”
Boyd, Isaac and Erica were relatively unscathed from their fight, and simultaneously wanted to complain about their orders, but didn’t want to face Derek’s likely short fuse at the moment. They busied themselves with their resources onhand.
After ten minutes of blessed silence, Erica asked the question she’d wanted to know. “Why do we gotta call you Iroh?”
Derek made a groaning noise from where he was on the floor, though it was more like a Please Don’t Unfocus Him than an expression of pain.
“Cause,” Stiles sat up to give her a goofy smile, “I redirect lighting. You’re all running around like Oh God It’s Gonna Kill Me and I just-“ Stiles made dramatic arm movements, with sound effects. Shwah shwa shweoo. “Like Iroh.”
“Shut. Up.” Derek’s vocabulary was taking an alarming turn for the worse, that seemed to be the only two words he knew how to say.
“Oh my god you’re such a grump when you almost die. I saved YOU, didn’t I!? Don’t even get a thank you.” Stiles crossed his arms and pouted.
“Leave you to get Werewolf Fried next time. And can you at least take a shower or something, you smell like Hannibal Lecter’s barbecue.” Stiles was expecting another Shut Up from Derek the Taciturn, but instead he got what sounded like a snort of amusement and Derek rose from the floor and actually went to the bathroom.
The pack’s eyes followed him, and returned to Stiles with confusion, but not enough curiosity to ask.
--
It was late in the night when everyone started dozing off from the adrenaline crash, Stiles was first, snoring until assaulted by enough pillows to stop lying on his back. Erica and Isaac were next, then Boyd turned in, looking at Derek, who’d fallen asleep still sitting on the floor. He was going to get him up and into either Stiles’ or Isaac’s bed, but decided that waking Derek up wasn’t the best idea. He could give himself a crik in the neck if he wanted.
The next morning, however, Derek was not on the floor where he should have been, given all laws of reason and logic. He was curled around Stiles, head buried in his shoulder like it’d take a crowbar to separate them. Both men jolted away from each other and dusted themselves off in alarm. Stiles yammered that if Derek wanted a cuddle he coulda just asked. Derek said nothing, but his ears looked a bit pink.
The next fight with the random electrical menace went about as well as the first, everyone getting more volts than were recommended by their local druid and Stiles having to play lightning rod. Derek did manage not to grill himself this time, and they almost had the thing banished again, but with a peak of the space bastard itself, the sun, the entity vanished and they had to stay until the next day. Again.
“What the hell is wrong with this place. Why couldn’t we go to Forks.” Stiles whined, utterly drenched and flopping on his bed. “FORKS.” He repeated when no one responded to his reference. Still receiving no reaction, he looked up. “God you uncultured swine.”
“Twilight isn’t culture.” Boyd asserted flatly.
“Twilight is peak culture. The reference just wasn’t clever.” Erica gave Boyd a Look.
Isaac say Derek open his mouth and pre-empted him by saying “Shut up everyone Derek’s grumpy.”
The alpha’s mouth shut with a click and he looked like an offended cat for half a second. “Just....focus. Please.” He decided to ignore Stiles’ objections to the word. “Unless you’re all masochists that like getting tased. Stiles don’t answer that.”
“I wasn’t!” Dirty, filthy little liar Stilinksi.
Erica glanced at him. “You really so thirsty you’re gonna electrocute your junk on this thing?”
“Well not THIS thing.”
“You’re not even into it you just want to not do work.” Isaac sliced directly through all of the bullshit and got to the heart of Stiles’ procrastination with so little interest in the matter that the room was silent for a second. The human spluttered.
“And that’s why you’re a bottom.” Erica commented from the laptop that she claimed to figure out where the thing would show up next.
“I am not a bottom!”
They continued bickering far longer than they should have, entirely because Derek had noise cancelling headphones. Boyd envied his foresight at what happened when these idiots were trapped in a room together.
“Derek, you with me or Stiles or what?” Isaac asked around his toothbrush as they were getting ready to sleep.
“With you, I guess.” Isaac was the only one that made an offer, so Derek would go with that. He still wasn’t sure why he ended up with Stiles the night before, but wasn’t going to think too hard about it. “I’ll watch the Doppler radar for a while, though.” He didn’t like going to bed before the others, he wanted to know they were all safe first before he would let down his guard. “Boyd, you’re at 3?” he confirmed when the shift of watching the weather radar would change.
Derek awoke the next morning to the sound of a snicker. From the slab of warmth that he was octopused around. He pulled away, realizing that somehow, he was in Stiles’ bed. Cuddling Stiles. “What the hell?” He didn’t know what was happening to him, and he didn’t like not controlling this. It wasn’t funny, no matter how much Erica and Isaac were losing their minds in the background.
“Hey again. Though you were gonna be with Isaac last night.” He could hear the smile in Stiles’ voice. “Couldn’t resist me, big guy?”
“What the hell happened?” He asked, not recalling how he got into bed, but getting out of it as quickly as he could.
Boyd knew, he definitely knew, but he was looking awful amused by the entire thing. “You wanna know?”
“I just asked, didn’t I?” Derek was grrrrouchy.
Boyd shrugged. “You were practically dead already, and once I took over watching, you just trudged over to Stiles’ bed, wrapped around him, and you were out like a light.”
“Derek are you a cuddler? You need some good cuddles?” Derek didn’t know why he chose these people to be his pack, they all clearly hated him and enjoyed torturing him.
---
They finally banished the anomalous asshole back to wherever it was supposed to be, and it would be their final night in the area. Derek was grateful for it, he didn’t like how he was so quickly becoming a laughingstock for them. He’d figure out this stupid sleeping thing and make it stop betraying his idiot wants or so help him, he’d never sleep again.
He ruffled his wet hair from the shower as he left the bathroom, looking out at the bed situation for the night. To his surprise, Stiles had his arm around Erica, and everyone was looking at him like they were prize behind doors on the worst award show ever. He didn’t even need to say anything.
“Pick a bed, buddy.” Stiles could hardly hide the laugh in his voice.
Derek exhaled like he’d rather pummel all of them and leave them there, driving back to Beacon Hills all on his own, but he walked over to Isaac’s bed.
“Alriiiiiight, if you’re suuuuure. It’s coooozy over here.” Erica teased, and Derek threw a pencil at her. “Ow!”
“Shut up.” He got into bed and hoped everyone died.
--
God, Stiles smelled good. And his neck was tantalizing. Beautiful expanse of skin just begging for a kiss, begging for a mark. A nip. He traced his lips up the line of his spinal column, the delicate vertebrae, and the fine hairs on the back of his neck. So beautiful, how they lifted with goosebumps in response, like before a lightning strike.
A sound woke him, and this time it wasn’t someone laughing at him. The room was still dark and still, but Stiles, who he realized had shivered and was VERY awake, and whom he w-
Who he was in bed with, wrapped around, AGAIN. The shock of it paralyzed him with fear for a second. He had actually kissed Stiles neck, in actual life, and had somehow gotten there from Isaac’s bed, and everything was terrible.
“Guess I got the only bed for you, huh?” Stiles breathed, and though Derek was looking at the back of his head, he could imagine his pupils dilated inky black. “You uh....either gotta stop doing that neck thing or grabbing your keys and actually finishing the job, alright?”
They were out the door in less than a minute, and there was a beat, before Erica and Isaac giggled.
“Shut up.” Boyd said, tired of this charade and just wanting some actual sleep, for god’s sake.