Work Text:
“We’re going to have to decide what to do,” Scott says, throaty, uncomfortable with what he’s potentially co-signing.
His aren’t the only eyes that slide towards Stiles before flicking away.
Derek’s hold, staring.
Stiles is stiller, smaller, his neck hangs. His hair is a flat shaggy cliff covering his forehead and brushing against his too-long lashes. It doesn’t hide the rubbery skin under his eyes, the way he can’t seem to stop chewing at the corner of his lips, the scent of rotting wood that is somehow oozing from his pores.
Stiles doesn’t notice any of the attention. He isn’t listening. His elbow is resting on his knee, forearm held out so he can flex his fingers, stretching them as far as they’ll go and holding them there.
A wobble, then a tremor races across the unstable plane of his hand and he folds it in quickly, as though trying to hide the rattle from himself. He doesn’t look up to see if anyone else is staring—he’ll expect they weren’t. He doesn’t grasp them as well as he used to, his pack. He’s alone now, in his head, in his skin, in every room.
He shakes out his hand roughly, as though the clatter of his bones hasn’t quite left him. His sneaker squeaks against the wood floor as he shifts with the motion and his shoulders hunch in further at the sound.
“We should make a statement,” Lydia says with all the hallmarks of confidence in her posture. It’s not in her voice.
Stiles doesn’t look up. He rubs his thumb over the callus under his middle finger, digs with the nail, drags until the skin breaks, almost like he’s trying to get at something underneath. Derek’s shoulders tense at the ripping sound as the skin pulls away. It’s all he can do not to smack Stiles’ hands apart.
He could. He should.
It would be the first time they’ve touched since the nogitsune.
He doesn’t.
The sound is like a ticking clock in a silent room, driving him to distraction and discomfort.
“We don’t know this pack means us harm,” Scott offers quietly.
No one else is watching as Stiles tears pieces of himself off and discards them on Derek’s coffee table.
“We don’t know it doesn’t.” Jackson, of course.
Scott glances at Stiles again. Stiles, whose gaze is unfocused, his breathing not quite steady, like there’s a hitch, a struggle, that has nothing to do with physical effort. He must sense the quiet because his hands stop and his gaze shifts up, finding Scott’s. He shakes his head just so, begging Scott not to make him participate, not to make him say when he barely knows his own voice anymore.
Scott looks away. His gaze skitters to Allison, away. “I don’t believe in preemptive strikes.”
“And if that gets us all killed?” Isaac demands. It’s hard to know if that’s a reaction to Scott and Allison’s brief moment of connection or what he actually thinks.
Derek almost bites something back but stops himself. Is Isaac more Scott’s beta than Derek’s now? And since when did that matter? Hadn’t their respective pack lines always been nebulous? Why did it suddenly seem important where exactly that line was?
Scott’s shoulders slump and he says softly, “If you don’t want to follow me, then don’t.”
He doesn’t look at Stiles this time but Derek is sure he’s not the only one who can feel how badly he wants to. He shouldn’t have to. Not so long ago, Stiles would’ve defended him without prompting. He would’ve had an opinion ready—loud and backed with a twisted but persuasive sort of logic—he wouldn’t have had to be looked to.
The nogitsune had killed that Stiles, left them with a version they didn’t know and couldn’t predict. He was a new animal, one they didn’t know the quirks of.
“Monsters are what they do, not how they’re born,” Boyd offers from the corner of the room, voice as steady as the rest of him.
Lydia shrinks for a half-second before giving a brisk nod and standing taller.
Derek clears his throat, trying to regain his rhythm among them. “We’ll be on guard then, but we don’t strike first.”
Peter rolls his eyes loudly from the kitchen. He’s collectively ignored as the pack stands to leave.
Stiles doesn’t move. He doesn’t seem to have noticed the gathering is dispersing. He’s still peeling tatters of skin away, staring at the leg of Derek’s coffee table while clearly not seeing it, sinking his warped scent further into Derek’s sofa.
Scott isn’t focused on anyone or anything else though. Not now, not since something wore his best friend’s face while trying to drown him from the inside. He cautiously touches Stiles’ shoulder, trying to prevent receiving another flinch from him. It wouldn’t be the first time and they all loathe it as much as Scott seems to.
Stiles comes to, eyes gradually focusing and chin coming up to look at Scott.
Scott offers him a half-smile that’s not happy as much as reassuring. “Ready?”
It’s strange to see how their relationship has shifted. He’d used to ask so much of Stiles and now the only questions he poses are ones he already knows the answers to, in case Stiles doesn’t.
He’s a good friend. Stiles had tried to tell Derek that a while ago, back when he was Stiles—had only ever been Stiles, after the hospital when Scott had taken off with Deucalion. Derek hadn’t been sure whether or not to believe him. Now he knows it’s the truth and he’s never been gladder to be wrong about something. Because Stiles needs that now, support and patience and exactly the kind of person Stiles had said Scott was.
He’s a good alpha too, Derek knows that. Probably better, if less knowledgeable, than him and yet—Their alliance suddenly seems tenuous, questionable.
Derek’s not sure why his hackles are suddenly raised. Scott hasn’t behaved any differently. Nothing has changed.
“Scott.” Allison cocks her head so Scott will meet her just outside Derek’s door and he carefully pulls his fingers from Stiles’ shoulder before walking away, making sure Stiles knows what he’s meant to be doing before he leaves.
Stiles stands on unsteady feet and Derek moves in front of him after he’s taken a few steps.
It’s not a conscious thought so much, it’s just—Stiles steps around him without even looking up, mumbles, “Sorry, man,” and shuffles to the door to stand near Scott.
Something twists in Derek’s gut. That wasn’t right, that wasn’t their dynamic, their dynamic was—
Gone.
His neck rolls and his eyes nearly glow, teeth starting to elongate, but he suppresses it. Blinks open clear eyes. Whatever that had been with Stiles—the camaraderie, the ease, the whatever-it-was—it didn’t exist anymore.
And that was fine.
It had been nice, but not necessary, and Derek would just have to let it go. Simple enough.
Stiles might barely acknowledge him now, but he barely acknowledged anyone now. He didn’t really look beyond his own borders anymore, too concerned with what had gone on within them without his permission to see past that.
Derek couldn’t exactly fault him for it.
He watches with an unfamiliar twinge as Scott touches Stiles’ shoulder, leads him with gentle pressure back down to his mom’s sedan. He does the driving now, Stiles’ Jeep merely a driveway decoration these days.
Derek follows them out, his loft feeling tainted somehow. He lags far enough behind that Scott and Stiles aren’t actually in view and is already feeling the stretch and twist of his spine as he fights to lose himself in something less prone to these odd emotional pangs.
Scott’s turning the key in the ignition and Cora’s waiting for him at the bottom of his stairs, arms crossed and leaning against the rail. She perks a dark brow. “Run?”
Derek’s answer is to tear off his jacket and shift.
Cora’s right behind him.
“Do you think I’m making the right call?”
Derek tears his eyes from where Stiles is standing, staring up at the menu, perfectly still. It’s eerie. Upsetting. He blinks at Scott, willing his skin not to crawl. It’s the exact opposite of what he would do so—“Yes.”
Scott’s not paying attention, he’s followed where Derek’s gaze had been focused, frowning. “We’ll get him back.” There’s no certainty in the words. It sounds more terrified than anything. There’s a ‘won’t we?’ at the end of it that already knows the answer.
“He’s not gone,” Derek’s not sure if he’s telling this to Scott or himself, “Different, but not gone.” Different he can live with. He hopes.
Scott’s frown deepens. “That is true, you know? You think—you think you’ve lost him, don’t you?”
Derek’s head snaps back to Scott. He hadn’t even realized he was staring at Stiles again. He blinks and doesn’t answer, which is pretty much an answer. Even though he doesn’t know how Scott means that, as pack, as a friend, as… a connection. Derek can’t quite pinpoint it himself and all of it’s true, at least to some extent.
“He’s not the glue anymore.” Scott taps at his mug with a nail that’s too long to be natural. “We have to be that now, for him. We have to keep him rooted here, keep him from… from getting lost or maybe just… just thinking he’s lost.” He laughs, breathy and unamused, and his gaze is back to Stiles now too. “I never realized how much work that was,” he meets Derek’s eyes, “and we’re only doing it for one person.”
He sighs, heaving himself up and crossing over to Stiles. He says something softly enough that Derek can’t hear it over the clatter of other patrons, the hiss of the espresso machine and Stiles’ own thud of a heartbeat. Whatever it is, it makes Stiles blink and finally order something.
Scott’s stepping up, Derek figures he should try to do the same no matter how… unsettled things seem between them.
“Is this them?” It’s nearly a whisper and Derek can only shake his head back at Isaac. It means something that he’s asking Derek and not Scott, or does it? Does it matter either way?
“They didn’t exactly sign their work, did they?” Peter says, making sure to inject exactly how idiotic he found Isaac’s question in every syllable.
Derek stares back at the slash marks on the Emissary’s throat. He didn’t know her, two towns over from Beacon Hills and, based on the state of her home, a recluse. Deaton had sent them looking.
She smells, like heat and death and must.
Derek’s claws extend and he shakes off the shift. Again. Whatever this twitchy, disquieted thing is, it’s getting old. He doesn’t know how to describe the feeling that’s crawled under his skin and blossomed there. It’s… space, space that wasn’t there before, an emptiness, a disconnect, an uprooting. Impossible to describe but undeniably there.
“Do we know if there’s anything missing?” Lydia asks, carefully shifting aside stacks of books, checking titles.
Jackson snorts. “Something that isn’t here would be more worth noting.”
Erica breezes past Derek, air whistling between them, on her way to the kitchen. Something’s not right, something—“Where’s Stiles?”
Scott’s head jerks up, dropping the box in his hands as he scans the room. “Stiles?” he calls, not panicking, not yet as he steps over precarious piles of magazines and baggies of dried ingredients.
Stiles’ face pops up in a window to the backyard. “In the choice of ‘M’s—murder, mystery and marigolds—” he holds up a ball of a flower—“I picked Alice in Wonderland’s nemesis. I’m very brave.”
Derek had thought maybe but, no… the feeling is still there, just as strong as it had been before.
“It’s freezing in here,” Jackson says, breath condensing in front of his lips as they search the Animal Clinic for traces of where Deaton might have gone.
Derek isn’t the only one who turns, expecting a quip from Stiles, maybe something to do with how they should’ve brought a heat rock for him, only to find that Stiles isn’t in the room.
Erica clears her throat, a less than subtle distraction from his absence. “We don’t know Deaton’s disappearance has anything to do with the other pack.” She shrugs her shoulders. “He’s kind of a sketchy guy all on his own and he could’ve sent us out just so he could sneak away behind our backs.”
Derek’s only half-listening, already disappearing after Stiles’ thudding heartbeat in the next exam room over. His back is to Derek as he enters, hand on the gleaming table.
“I tried to kill Scott in here,” he says. “Or torture him, I guess. I stabbed him all the way through with a katana and watched as he tried to heal around it. Over and over again. Watched and twisted.”
Derek opens his mouth to say, ‘that wasn’t you,’ but Stiles already knows that. The guilt is because it couldn’t have been done without him, whether he was in on it or not. Maybe Derek should still say it so Stiles knows they know, but guilt isn’t always rational. Derek knows that. Guilt’s a predator, doesn’t matter if you deserve to be prey. Maybe he just needs someone to treat him like Stiles. “I don’t think Scott is looking for an apology; pretty sure he’s just looking for you. You let an insult Jackson pranced right into slip past.”
Stiles turns to look at him, blinking, his hand slipping from the table. His lips quirk to the side and he’s less tense as he remarks, “Can’t have that.”
Derek turns just as Stiles walks past and the sides of their hands brush for a brief moment. Derek’s entire body goes calm, as though every hair has been standing on end, every muscle has been clenched, every breath has been short, and he can finally relax.
Oh.
Like a semi roaring out of his blindspot, Derek can’t believe he ever missed it. The reason a pack with two alphas, an undead asshole, a former kanima, a banshee and a hunter works is because the human, without any supernatural instincts, doesn’t know it shouldn’t.
Stiles had been reaching out to him before—before. A palm pressed to his cheek, an arm around his waist, fingers wrapped around his wrist, a brush to his forearm, a grip on his shoulder. Clear signs of trust and care and Stiles dragging him closer for no other reason than he thought Derek deserved that, belonged to them, filled in a hole in the circle that was him and Scott and whoever else they picked up and fit in.
Derek didn’t think it had been intentional on Stiles’ part, just that Stiles always had him on the table as an option. Maybe not the first one or even the best one but he was always a choice, for backup, for knowledge, for a safe haven. He was pack, not because they chose him, but because they could depend on him and Stiles had been the first, often the only one, to treat him that way.
And while no one had fought it, no one had embraced it to the extent Stiles had either.
No wonder he’s been feeling so disconnected.
“The fact that it’s glowing seems… bad,” Isaac offers as they all stand around the nemeton.
“Give this boy a MacArthur grant already,” Peter mutters under his breath.
Isaac snaps his teeth at him.
Derek steps closer for no other reason than to bump Stiles’ shoulder. The same soothing shudder floods through him at the contact. The nemeton is pulsing with a glow like it’s set to explode and Derek feels calmer than he has in the last forty-six hours.
Scott’s brow furrows. “Lydia, have you heard about anything like this?”
“There was nothing about any crimson lightshow in any of the books I read, no.”
Stiles shoves his hands into his pockets, pulls his shoulders in so he’s no longer touching Derek and quips—with an almost familiar cadence, “Welp, my bet is that it’s viral marketing for the next Rocky Horror Picture Show.” He leans over to look down at the nemeton’s face. “Two, please.” He shrugs after a beat. “Worth a try.”
Derek follows him home, only because Stiles had seemed… off. Not necessarily worse, but not necessarily better either. He frowns when he lands on the floor of Stiles’ room, staring around at the utter disarray.
His head jerks up when Stiles’ heartbeat whams onto the landing and he perks an eyebrow. “What’s all this?”
Stiles pauses on the threshold of his room, a bottle of orange Fanta frozen on the way to his lips. He lowers it carefully. “Luckily not private,” he says, a slight edge to it.
Derek forces himself to un-tense, to act as comfortable in Stiles’ domain as he once was. But that had been in response to Stiles’ overfamiliarity and it feels unearned now. “Answer the question.”
Stiles blinks at the teetering piles of books, the Jenga tower of crumbled and stained pages, the bags of Cheetos and trail mix with only raisins left in them and the crumpled cans of Red Bull. “I’m tracking them,” he says finally, heaving out a sigh, “this pack. Their movements over the past half century or so. Pretty sure the origin point, with this alpha, in this incarnation, was Angola and they’ve been slowly migrating west over the decades.”
“Guesses on why they’re here?”
Stiles shrugs. “I’d say the nemeton but there’s no evidence to back that. Just the kind of two plus two equation it’s easy to feel confident in. The nemeton’s a beacon for the supernatural and it’s doing beacon-y things while we have new supernaturals hanging around. Two plus two.”
“And the pack’s nomadic because…”
“Well, not hard to figure out why they fled Angola. Colonial war followed by civil war, a lack of any educational opportunities and, of course, the thick layer of racism to top it all off. After that, well—”
Stiles shifts uneasily and Derek prompts him, gruffly, “What.”
“It gets kind of… murky. Either they have an uncanny ability to show up just as disaster strikes or, well… they bring it with them.” Derek perks his brows and Stiles shakes his head. “Nothing definitive yet, but the coincidences are starting to pile up. But you know, correlation not being causation and all… ”
Derek leans back against Stiles’ window sill, crosses his arms. “This seems more proactive than reactive,” he says with a nod of his head towards the research spilling out onto Stiles’ keyboard, desk, and floor.
Stiles narrows his eyes. “Better to be sitting ducks then, let the next Big Bad come in and crack us open and carve us up without offering even token resistance?” he demands, almost belligerent, daring Derek to agree.
He doesn’t. Instead he takes a step closer, grabs Stiles’ elbow in his hand and says, “What do you need?”
The muscles under Derek’s grip unbunch and Stiles shoves two library books into his chest, ripped pieces of paper sticking out of them all over the place, saying, “Proof. And, if not that, then at least a pretty damn compelling pattern.”
When Derek finally leaves, through the front door, the sheriff is already sitting at the kitchen table. He freezes on his way out and the sheriff clears his throat. “He asleep?”
“No,” Derek tells him truthfully. Stiles hadn’t even left his desk chair yet.
The sheriff doesn’t look surprised by that, just dismayed. “I don’t think he does. I don’t think he can. He’s afraid that if he does, if—it will come back.” He rubs his forehead, gives a grim half-laugh. “So am I.” He shakes his head with a sour grin. “I couldn’t protect him from it then, I can’t protect him from it now.”
“It’ll take time, for the both of you.” Derek’s not sure what else to say, but he’s certain that much is true. He’s also sure that the sheriff will probably fuck up a lot more than he gets right, the same as the rest of them. There’s no ‘Your Loved One was Possessed by a Chaotic, Evil Fox Spirit - Now What?’ handbook. Derek thinks it might be more important to keep trying than to do nothing because you’re waiting to come up with the perfect response though.
“Suppose it will,” he says gruffly. He glances up at Derek, life coming back to his eyes like he’s just remembered who he’s speaking to. “You’ll stick close?”
The soothing sensation from touching Stiles earlier is still running over every inch of his skin when he answers without guile, “I will.”
When things go bad, Stiles already knows how many pack members there are, where they’re likely to hole up, and what—in all likelihood—their plan is based on what they’ve done to the past four packs he was able to find records of.
It’s a quick, nearly anti-climactic denouement. Scott gets the alpha under the ribs and when one of the betas grabs Stiles and pins him to the side of the high school, Derek is already there slamming into her and sending her sprawling. He turns back to Stiles and his eyes are welling, face red, breath stuttering.
Derek looks behind him for a brief second, enough to see the pack is holding their own, before he grabs Stiles by the forearm, drags him inside to a supply closet and locks the door behind them.
“Okay.”
Stiles stares at him, glassy eyes tracking every twitch of Derek’s movement while his lungs struggle to take in air.
Derek grabs him by the shoulders, the same place the beta had touched him. He probably shouldn’t but her scent—he can’t—he grunts. “Fall apart if you need to. Let go.”
Stiles blinks at him and then… then he does. He shoves Derek away from him and screams, a harsh and desperate thing that sounds as though it’s going to rip him in half before it’s through with him. He slams his fists into the metal shelving, bottles and buckets and supplies cascading down onto their feet, his breaths a stuttering, gulping mess. He grabs and hurls and yanks and slams, elbows into walls, sneakers into metal, voice rebounding off concrete. He rages for full minutes without ceasing.
Derek can smell blood and sweat and chemicals by the time Stiles finally slides down against the door, face streaked, chest rising and falling with gargantuan breaths, limbs trembling.
“Better?”
Stiles laughs, breathy and lost. “No.”
Derek sinks down across from him, kicking aside a mop and wash rags to do it. The room between them is filled with nothing but Stiles’ hitching breaths (which Derek suspects might also be hiding a sob or two) and his own near-silent exhalations. “You don’t have to be.”
Stiles drops his head back against the wood, trying to get his muscles to stop spasming as he digs his quaking fingers into his shoulder. He sniffs hard, says, “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
He doesn’t move for another twenty minutes. After sixteen, Derek shifts his foot across the floor to touch the toe of his sneaker to Stiles’. It’s the quickest way to reaffirm that feeling of pack, what Stiles had done so often to him without Derek ever realizing it.
That’s not why Derek’s touching him now.
And that scares him as badly as anything ever has.
Scott’s waiting outside the front doors when they walk out. He looks miserable and says hoarsely, “Stiles, I didn’t—I’m sorry.”
Stiles tucks his shoulders in, hands buried in his hoodie pockets before yanking them back out, gripping the long sleeve over Scott’s forearm and tugging at the fabric to get him to walk closer, shaking his head. “No,” he says, then stronger, “no, you were right. You were right. We can’t live like—Don’t ever start expecting the worst, Scott. Hear me?”
Scott nods once and pulls Stiles in for a brief, but tight, hug. Stiles freezes for a split second before he returns it.
Derek fingers curl into fists watching them, claws digging into his palms and leaving them bloody and torn.
When Derek finally goes looking for him, he finds Stiles sitting on his front porch. His hands are hanging between the spread of his thighs, fingers tangled together, Chucks half-buried under the light dusting of snow on the stair below.
Derek’s eyes track the bruised and torn skin of Stiles’ knuckles and it’s an excuse to—it’s how he can—He sinks down next to Stiles, reaching over and gently pulling his hands apart, letting his veins run black the second their skin meets. And if that was all he wanted he would stop there but—He takes a deep breath and carefully notches their fingers together.
Stiles’ eyes widen more and more until, finally, their palms slide against one another’s.
Derek swallows, says gruffly, hoping his voice won’t shake, “I’m trying.” He is and it’s more terrifying than he thought it would be. He glances up at Stiles from the corner of his eye, taking in his surprise in the form of his parted lips and the pink of his cheeks. More rewarding too.
Stiles’ fingers go from rigid to soft and, after a moment that feels endless, his thumb sweeps the back of Derek’s hand. “Me, too.”