Work Text:
Stiles has been shut up in his work room for five days by the time Derek decides enough is enough. He gathers essentials -- protein bars, a four-pack of those Starbucks frap mocha things, the latest issue of Necromancer Monthly that just arrived yesterday, a set of clean clothes, and a pack of red vines -- shoves everything into one of the tote bags they have lying around the house, and makes his way downstairs.
Scott's half-awake, chewing on a piece of toast without even realising it's the seven-grain kind he hates. He looks up, belatedly, at Derek, and it takes a second for his eyes to slip down to the tote bag. Derek can almost see the way Scott's brain kicks into sluggish gear, anticipating the moment when Scott asks, "Time?"
"Yeah," Derek says.
They're all used to Stiles barricading himself in his labs for a day or two at a time, even three days when something new comes to town, drawn by the nemeton, but five days is pushing it. Everyone's going a little stir-crazy without Stiles, on edge without the pack's emissary and mother hen there to touch and scent and see.
"Least no boom this time," Scott mutters, before he stops chewing, slowly. His head dips and he looks down at the toast in his hand, nose wrinkling as he lets it drop back down to his plate. "Real food?"
Scott's just so absolutely hangdog pathetic in the mornings. It's -- not that Derek would ever admit it -- adorable.
"He'll probably need to crash for a while," Derek says. "But I'll make a grocery run and I bet he'll be in the kitchen tomorrow first thing, so if you have any requests, start a list."
A noise of agreement comes out of Scott's throat and -- yup, there he goes, facedown in the toast and snoring again.
Derek can't help the chuckle. He hoists the tote bag over his shoulder and heads out of the back door.
--
The pack lives in a house that backs up to the preserve -- not the Hale house or even built in the same spot, but on the same land and sprawling out into gardens and trampoline and firepit. Stiles' work room, his lab, his little cottage of terrifying wonders, as Isaac calls it, is about half a mile away. That's far enough that if anything explodes, it won't get the house, and if anything escapes, there's time to catch whatever it is before it hits either the pack or the general population.
...They know this because it's happened. More than once.
Derek feels the shiver of wards cross over his skin and through his teeth once he gets a few hundred feet away from Stiles' lab. The wards here are strong in warning but not on active footing, so whatever Stiles has holed himself up to do isn't dangerous.
Isn't that dangerous.
Derek takes a deep breath, can't smell anything too off the wall, just the typical blend of nightshade plants and fungi, clean bones and the metallic iron of blood, frost and freshly-tilled dirt. Beneath all of that, the scent of Stiles is rich and strong, hints of glee and satisfaction spiralling outwards into the air.
Girding his metaphorical loins, Derek goes up the door, knocks twice, and then opens the door.
He promptly shuts it again. He stands there, listening to the scrabbling of -- of whatever that monstrosity is.
"Pack, idiot," Stiles says. There's a thwack, then, sounds like spatula hitting bone, and a clacking noise that makes Stiles laugh. "Derek. So behave."
More clacking, hidden under the noise of Stiles' footsteps. The door swings open and Stiles stands there, beaming at Derek. His eyes are glassy with exhaustion, his hair in disarray from where he's pushed it back with his fingers, smelling like five days of sweat and blood, his shirt on backwards and one leg of his jeans torn off above the knee, bare feet covered in dirt and a smear of mud on his cheek.
"Hi," Stiles says.
Every time Derek looks at Stiles, he thinks that next time he won't be so overcome with affection and love and (according to Malia) deep, super gross need, but every time is just like the time before. Even now.
"You need a shower and about thirty hours of sleep," Derek says, "but first you need to explain what that is." He gestures behind Stiles and will never admit how relieved he is that Stiles is standing between him and -- that thing.
It's a spider, okay, Derek knows that. Eight legs, mandibles, sure -- it meets the basic qualifications of an arachnid. But it's made out of bones, bones from all different kinds of mammals, it has no eyes, it smells like death and Stiles' magic, and it's as big as Stiles.
"It's Herbert!" Stiles says, brightly. "Isn't he just the best?"
"I brought those coffee things you like," Derek says, reaching into the tote bag and pulling out the four-pack without taking his eyes off of -- Herbert. "You can have them once you tell me -- anything."
Stiles looks torn between making grabby hands at the coffee -- he's gone five days without, after all; there's no caffeine allowed in the labs after the time Stiles turned a pot of ivy into an actual venomous tentacula -- and bragging about Herbert. Herbert wins, though, and Stiles turns a little, gives Herbert the kind of smile that young kids give puppies.
"They've had an ongoing series in Necromancer Monthly about bone golems versus regular types of golems, and whether necromantic magic could animate something with as much independence as kabbalistic magic, especially when creating things from other types of materials, which is fascinating; Professor Dembek had this whole series of experiments about insects which was interesting but I didn't think it went far enough because he never used anything venomous, which was a huge gap in the methodology -- thankfully that witch up in Vermont wrote in and pointed out the same thing, otherwise I was ready to send off an email and I don't think I could've been as polite as she was about it," Stiles says, all in one breath. Derek, more than used to this sort of tangent by now, simply clears his throat. Stiles blinks, says, "Oh, right. So, then when that coven came, I had a great idea, but no time to try it out until now!"
He bounces on his feet and Derek hands over one of the coffee things, watching with fondness as Stiles chugs the whole thing in three gulps. "What was your great idea?"
"My great idea was Herbert," Stiles says, eyes shining. "Our very own acromantula! Er. Dead acromantula. Undead? Unliving, anyway. Covens hate acromantulas, it's one of the few things J.K. Rowling got right. So...I made one! For the next time we have witches."
"You made an acromantula," Derek says, flatly, not even fighting as Stiles steals another coffee. "Out of?"
Stiles finishes the coffee thing and says, "Oh, you know, whatever I could find. There's some deer in there for speed, part of a mountain lion for the predator instinct, I had some wendigo teeth leftover so I grew those a little bigger for his fangs, some of the little fiddly bits come from a couple ravens -- those help make Herbert pretty light for his size, stuff like that. Putting it all together was pretty easy; it was the binding that took forever and about three pints of blood. Worked, though! Wait 'til Professor Dembek hears about this. Ha. He'll never live it down."
There are times when Derek rues the day he fell in love with a mad scientist who also possesses very strong necromantic abilities. This is very much one of those days. Still, he did, and it's too late now to even dare to dream of thinking of taking it back.
"What does Herbert eat?" he asks, as he ruffles through the tote bag for the red vines. Stiles darts forward, steals them out of Derek's hand as soon as Derek's got hold of them.
"Me, mostly," Stiles says, one red vine hanging out of the corner of his mouth. He must catch sight of Derek's slightly wider eyes because he hurries to add, "He gets a couple drops of blood every day or so, and as long as he stays out of the light, he won't need much more than that and a couple mushrooms every week. Not even deadly mushrooms! Just regular portobello. It's the phosphorus, you know."
Derek has no idea what that's supposed to mean, but he nods before asking, carefully, "He's going to stay here?"
Stiles snorts, says, "Oh, for sure. He's super curious; if we took him to the house, he'd get into everything. Nah, he's got a cushion in the closet to sleep on. That's where he was before you poked the wards and he got excited to meet someone new."
"Okay," Derek says. "Well. It's been five days."
Stiles spins in place, points at Herbert, and says, "You were supposed to tell me after eighty hours!" Herbert shuffles back a couple steps, chitters -- though Derek doesn't know how -- and Stiles, sighs, says, "Because I can tell time, that's how. You know better, Herbie." The bone spider -- bone acromantula -- looks absolutely sheepish now, which -- it doesn't have a face, how is any of this even remotely possible?
Stiles. It's possible because Stiles.
Derek pinches the bridge of his nose and takes his secret weapon out of the tote bag.
Stiles hears the pages ruffle and goes very, very still, before he turns around slowly, eyes fixed on this month's Necromancer Monthly.
"Tell Herbert it's bedtime, and let's go," Derek says, stepping backwards, holding out the magazine. "You can have this once you've had a shower and are in bed."
"I need to see what Dembek said," Stiles says. "Derek, you don't understand, I need to see if I get to tell the preeminent theoretical necromancer of our time to suck it." Derek takes another step back. Stiles snarls and the feel of death magic rises up all around him. "Fine," Stiles says. He turns back to Herbert, crouches down, and coos at the spider, lets the spider -- kind of snuggle into him as he presses a kiss to the -- top? of Herbert's -- bones. "Get some sleep. I'll be back once grumpy back there's satisfied I've had enough rest." Herbert makes some kind of clacking noise, and Stiles laughs, says, "You're so right. Now, bed. Sweet dreams, baby boy."
Herbert scuttles backwards, disappearing into the closet, as Stiles stands up. He wavers a little as he does, but he's steady enough by the time he's going for another red vine. He turns back to Derek, then, and winces at the look on Derek's face.
"Okay, but see," Stiles points out, "you told me no puppies. Herbert's not a puppy."
"He's -- in theory -- a witch-killing bone spider, Stiles," Derek says. "That's not any better."
Stiles follows Derek out of the work room, locks the door behind him and pulls the wards up tight. "Not any worse, really," he says. "And, I mean, he's useful, right, and we don't need to spend much money on food and no money on toys or cleaning supplies or anything, and just think of the look on Scott's face the first time they meet."
Scott's going to pass out in a dead faint. Okay. That might actually be worth it. After that, though, all bets are off; Scott loves creepy-crawly things, he's going to adore Herbert.
"You need a shower," Derek says, choosing to leave the argument behind. He knows he's not going to win. Herbert's already here, after all. "And food. And sleep. Five days, Stiles. The pack misses you."
"The pack, huh," Stiles says. He grins, bumps up against Derek as they walk back to the pack house. "What about you?"
Derek steals the red vines back, hands over a protein bar. Stiles makes a face but starts eating it. "I guess."
"That's a stunning endorsement," Stiles says. "Gee, thanks. I feel so wanted by my own husband. Maybe I should go back to Herbert. He'll be excited to see me."
Derek pushes the tote bag higher on his shoulder and then picks Stiles up, throws him over the other shoulder. "You're going nowhere except the shower," Derek says. "And then bed. And I'm not letting you get out of it until tomorrow."
Stiles laughs, says, "Tomorrow? How you gonna do that?"
"You're gonna pass out as soon as you hit the mattress," Derek says. "After that, I'll use my imagination."
"Ooooo," Stiles says. "I like your imagination. Mine's weird but yours is -- yeah, okay. Fine. You win this one. And before you say I'm letting you win, I just want you to know that I have a great view of your ass right now and I'm a little light-headed at the view and the carry and the lack of food and sleep, but mostly the view, and proving Professor Dembek wrong can wait until I take full advantage of food and sleep and that ass."
Derek lets out a sigh, says, "You can wait because you already know you're right. Right?"
"I'm so right," Stiles says, dreamily. He gets one hand under enough control to squeeze Derek's butt, and says, "I'm the rightest. Just -- so right."
He's snoring before Derek even makes it inside the house.