Work Text:
Bang-bang-bang.
Gunshots pulsed through the stale summer air, their perfect cadence sending Stiles’ steady heartbeat into supersonic chaos.
Grandpa Michael’s head snapped up, crow’s feet flanking his narrowed, pale hazel eyes like a small army. “Hunters.” Grandpa shook his head, suspicious gaze darting through the forest. He didn’t stand from his crouch in front of the knee-high stalks of purple and orange tube-shaped wildflowers.
Stiles, seated beside him, pointed at the bright yellow Posted sign nailed to the twisted trunk of a Box Elder tree at the edge of the meadow. “Maybe they didn’t see the signs?” Blood made him queasy, and the thought of a deer somewhere in the preserve, bleeding out, or red-stained feathers flying off of a wild turkey had his stomach swooping.
A jerk of his head to one side. Then the other. His grandfather briefly closed his eyes, sighing deep, then reopened them and looked hard at Stiles, putting weight behind his words. “Not that kind of hunter.”
“Oh,” Stiles whispered. Oh. Crap. The werewolves.
They waited in noisy silence, ears perked, listening for clues between the song notes of crickets and sparrows. None came. No more gunshots, no sounds of struggle, only the crackle of August heat. “Might as well finish up,” Grandpa whispered. A pair of old, heavy-cotton gardening gloves slipped over his weathered hands and extended up to his forearms. After checking several tube-shaped flowers for rainwater, he snapped a few stalks at the base and wrapped them in a stained rag that had once been a white t-shirt. He lay the swaddled foxgloves in the wicker basket next to his boot-covered feet, alongside sprigs of mugwort, kava, and evening primrose.
“So, why do we bother to use foxgloves if they’re poisonous?” Stiles asked. Despite being genuinely curious, a belligerent note underscored the question. He was still in a sour mood from this morning, when his mom, with inky smudges under her eyes even though it was only ten am, told him he couldn’t play video games for the rest of the day. It wasn’t his fault he forgot to clean his room! Sometimes his brain just did what it wanted, and it wanted to play Half Life 2 with Scott instead of bringing piles of dirty clothes to the laundry room or making the bed. Summer vacation was winding down, and he didn’t want to spend his last moments of freedom being responsible. When Stiles stewed around the living room, raining his dark mood all over them like a storm cloud, she’d called her father.
“You’re the only one who can handle him when he gets like this,” Claudia Stilinski sighed into the receiver. “Noah can’t handle it because it reminds him of Elias.”
Stiles, who’d been eavesdropping, as usual, shivered. Despite adopting the same family nickname, he hated being compared to his paternal grandfather, a crotchety war vet they only saw on holidays. The same blood might run in their veins, but Stiles was hell-bent on making sure he was nothing like the cruel, volatile man who criticized everything Stiles and his father did, who sneered at Stiles’ mother and mocked magic every chance he got.
As much as he disliked his paternal grandfather, he loved his mom’s father, Mieczysław “Michael” Gajos, from whom Stiles had gotten his impossible-to-pronounce first name. “Really, mom?” He’d often complained. “Calling me Mike would have made kindergarten a lot easier.”
She’d laughed but always replied, “Since when do you like easy ? And Mieczysław’s a good, old-fashioned pagan name. During the Catholic reformations in the 1500s, they banned many Slavic forenames. Think of it as a rebellion.” Then she’d wink at him. “You’re very good at not following the rules.” While she was proud of his given name, she understood his desire to go with something a bit more simple and didn’t protest when he’d gone by Stiles. And she also understood that no matter how much he favored one grandfather over the other, a ten-year-old boy would much rather play video games than pick flowers in the woods.
“When I was your age, I would have given anything to have shown magical potential.” Mom handed him her plaited wicker basket and shoved him out the door toward Grandpa Michael’s truck. It happened that way, sometimes: magic skipped entire generations. It floated right over Claudia’s head and landed in Stiles’ lap like an anvil.
“I’m still not convinced I have magic,” he argued over his shoulder at her. “Those sparks could have been static electricity. The Piezo effect? Galvanism? Saint Elmo’s Fire!”
She crossed her arms over her chest and leveled him with a look. “Yeah, you definitely need an afternoon outdoors. You’ve been spending too much time on the internet.”
Rude.
Stiles looped his arm through the basket handle, the base bumping his jean-clad hip as he stumbled back toward Grandpa’s truck. The preserve was a healthy mix of wide, almost level sections and hills so steep they seemed like mountains. Old hardwood trees covered the land, their ancient roots like coil spring traps snapping at Stiles’ fumbling feet. Grandpa, a broad, muscular man with a monk’s fringe of salt and pepper fur around the base of his skull, was planted solidly on the ground, his lumbering elephant-like steps never hindered by the treacherous woodland trails. He looked so normal and human ; he was the last person you’d suspect of being a spark, a person blessed with the power of magic. But he could predict the first frost of fall to the day and how many inches of rain they’d get in spring by listening to frogs sing. He planted by the moon and astrology signs, and his stalks of corn grew ten feet high.
He was also an amateur and very low-rent comedian. “Pull my finger,” he’d say at the dinner table on Sunday nights. And as soon as Stiles did, he’d fart so loud it scared the squirrels in the front yard. Stiles would roll on the floor, laughing. That happy-go-lucky man was missing now, replaced by rigid shoulders and a bitten bottom lip. Stiles had inherited the same nervous tic, and his tongue darted out to smooth over his own chewed skin.
Each spring, white clouds of dogwood blooms lined the well-worn paths of the preserve, while a canopy of red and gold leaves blazed overhead in fall. Hawks hung in the powder-blue sky on cloudless summer days, searching for mice and other small rodents. Herds of deer roamed the area, as well as wild turkeys, coyotes, and raccoons. There were bears when his grandfather was young, but Stiles never saw one.
And, of course, there were foxes and wolves.
“Foxgloves serve many purposes,” Grandpa said, answering Stiles’ earlier question. “We still use their essence in some potions and elixirs associated with the heart. You can’t just pick them and eat them,” he warned. Grandpa grinned at him for the first time since they’d heard the gunshot. It transformed his entire face, smoothing the parallel creases on his forehead. “But I’ll tell you a secret, Mieczysław, whenever you see foxgloves, you know the wróżki are nearby.”
“Fairies?” Stiles laughed. “First, it was magic and hunters and werewolves, and now you’re telling me fairies exist?”
He nodded, a twinkle in his eyes. When he got that look, Stiles imagined he could see the magic swirling inside him, hear the gentle hum. “Long ago, the wróżki and sparks of this land struck a deal. The wróżki help our familiars slip out of the preserve and into town to steal food. And the foxes are good at it, too,” Grandpa went on, with grand drama in his voice, “because the wróżki slip foxgloves onto their paws, so no people and no predators can hear them.”
He paused in front of the passenger side of his truck and reached down into the basket Stiles held, moving aside the protective cloth and hooking a gloved finger into the freshly picked flower, tilting it for Stiles to peer inside. “Every night, the wróżki take the blooms off the flowers and put them on the foxes’ feet, and when the foxes return to the preserve every morning, the wróżki put the blooms back onto the stems, so our magic can remain a secret from the rest of the world. See these speckles inside the blossoms?” Stiles nodded, looking at the tiny, dark, irregular-shaped dots. They reminded him of the moles that dotted his skin. “That’s the only way you can see what the wróżki have been doing. They leave behind their handprints.”
Another shot rang out, louder, closer, ricocheting off the tree trunks. Stiles flailed, dropping the basket on the ground and spilling their afternoon forage. A large, calloused hand came down on his shoulder, steadying him.
“Are they after the werewolf pack?” The words trembled harder than the wind-ruffled leaves tossing shadows across the hood of Grandpa’s rusted tan pickup.
“Thanks to the hunters, there’s no pack left. Just a young, lone wolf.” In Stiles‘ imagination, the wounded deer and turkey morphed into matted fur and a spit-flecked muzzle, tongue lolling in the dirt, eyes slowly losing their glow as the ground around the wounded animal soaked up iron, transforming into a sticky maroon pool.
“We need to help him,” Stiles begged. “Grandpa, please.”
So far, Stiles had dipped his toes into the supernatural world. It was one thing to pick flowers and memorize potion ingredients, produce a few sparks from his fingertips, and manipulate mountain ash, but helping a werewolf against supernatural hunters was diving into the deep end. Michael Gajos surveyed his grandson, probably thinking he barely looked able to tread water.
Stiles took a deep breath and squared his thin shoulders. He bent down, carefully scooping the flowers back into the basket. When he stood, he looked his grandfather directly in the eye. “If fairies will help foxes, then foxes can help wolves.” His voice was fiercer than he felt. He held out the basket in hands that no longer shook.
Grandpa read the mulish determination on Stiles’ face. Pigheadedness: another trait inherited from Elias, along with his dark temper. Darkness was as much a part of Stiles as the light, and when he embraced them both, the magic under his skin sang. It was crooning now, buzzing like a hive of bees, threatening to ooze like honey from his pores.
“Okay,” Grandpa said, face softening, eyes gleaming with something like pride. “I know where he’s hiding.”
The two-room cabin sat about a mile off a once-paved road that had turned to gravel, right on the edge of the preserve. After a quick detour home to grab medical tonics, non-perishable food, and one of Grandpa’s unique concoctions in a dark glass jar, they parked the truck behind a grove of thick green laurels and picked their way up a narrow path that crawled along a steep hillside and turned into a mud bog where it crossed a trickling creek.
“This is the only safe place he’s got in Beacon Hills,” Grandpa said when they crossed over the protective wards. Polish immigrants—and the first sparks—set the supernatural barricades a century ago when they settled in the area. They deterred strangers, confused them, filled any passerby with the burning desire to turn around and return home. A descendant of those same sparks, Stiles wasn’t a stranger, but the powerful spell work still made him dizzy.
Grandpa pointed to the cabin. “He’s in there.” They paused in front of a thicket of fat oak trees and ferns taller than Stiles. The words weren’t hushed; a werewolf could hear for miles if nothing disrupted their senses, and they knew whispering was a waste of time. “Since the fire last year, I’ve come across his trail half-a-dozen times while out foraging. Once I even caught a glimpse of him on the porch, but I never get closer to the cabin than right here.”
“How’d he get past the wards?” Stiles wondered aloud.
Grandpa’s eyes went comically round. “Must be magic.”
Stiles scoffed and rolled his eyes.
They stood roughly twenty-five yards away from the dilapidated two-room cabin. Supposedly, timbers of a ship that carried the first sparks from Poland made up the walls and roof, and they built the crumbling chimney of smooth, round ballast stones. Two broken-out windows and the black rectangle of a doorless doorway gaped at them across the distance.
“Why haven’t you tried to talk to him?” Stiles asked, shifting their heavy box of goods to his other arm.
“He might not think I’m dangerous, but he’s like a wild animal in a burrow; if we disrupt his den, he won’t come back. I think evading the hunters is proving to be more than he bargained for. The Hale family has held this territory for as long as anyone remembers, but leaving the land might be the best option to keep him safe. He’s just a teenager, not much older than you, Stiles. Right now, though, he needs rest, time to heal, and most of all, he needs food.” Grandpa touched the tip of a thick forefinger to Stiles’ button nose. “That’s where you come in.”
Stiles walked a few feet closer to the cabin, then laid the box on the ground. “It’s okay to eat,” he said aloud—he didn’t need to yell; the wolf could hear him. ”I know you don’t know me, but I promise you can trust me. I will get stronger with time, but this is all I can do for now. One day…” Stiles trailed off. He glanced back at his grandfather, who avidly watched the open doorway. When he turned around, he saw a flash of green-gold eyes in the darkness. Magic stirred under his skin. “One day, I’ll be a spark.” It was the first time he’d applied the term to himself. The label had never fit before.
Stiles stood and, together, he and Grandpa walked back to the truck. “What will the elixir do?” He asked as he buckled his seatbelt. “The one in the brown bottle. The one you had me brew with the foxglove flowers.”
Grandpa leveled him a look as he shifted into drive. “What do you think?”
The tires spewed gravel behind them, rocks pinging off the undercarriage like a shower of bullets.
“It’ll put slippers on his paws.” All the way home, Stiles thought of green-gold eyes.
For the rest of summer vacation, Stiles returned to the cabin every day. No sign of the werewolf. He came back on weekends until the first—accurately predicted—frost made the narrow path too treacherous to travel.
“I heard no rumblings from the hunters about a fresh kill,” Grandpa said from the driver’s seat. “He made it out of Beacon Hills. That’s a good thing, Stiles. You did well.”
The truck idled on the gravel road, ancient motor shaking and spewing complaints from the exhaust pipe. Stiles told himself the engine vibrations were causing the unpleasant butterfly flutters in his stomach and not the quick glimpse of green-gold eyes that haunted his dreams. A lightning flash. A spark.
I did well.
Never seeing him again is a good thing.
Ten Years Later
Stiles slipped the red robe over his heavy shoulders, the crushed velvet of the hood soft against the back of his neck. He ran his right hand down his left arm, smoothing the fabric and releasing the strangely comforting smell of mothballs and cedar into the air.
His father frowned at the Apple watch on his wrist. “Dad, come on,” Stiles said, holding his right foot up and out like he was doing the hokey-pokey. He shook it back and forth, shoelaces snapping. “I’m wearing Vans, and I google half my spells. It’s the twenty-first century. The jig is up.”
Noah huffed but held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Fine, fine. Whatever you say. I’m not a spark, but it just seems like, for today, traditional would be more appropriate. But what do I know?”
Stiles didn't know either. He was flying blind. The people who could have told him were gone.
The stroke had taken his grandfather mercifully quick just two years after Stiles began his training. Frontotemporal dementia, on the other hand, had drawn out his mother’s death like a brutal election campaign. It stole her away and offered her back for ten minutes or two hours at a time, a fleeting, false promise of normality, only to rip her away again, over and over until Stiles was numb. There’d been no time to ask his grandfather all he needed to know, and he couldn’t bear to waste the precious, lucid moments with his mother interrogating her for information about magic.
“It doesn’t matter,” Stiles said, pulling a sheet of folded printer paper from his jean’s pocket. It was all there in Times New Roman size twelve font: the words he needed to say, the direction he needed to face, the exact location the sun needed to be in the sky. But it was a joke. No one would come. Had there ever been a claiming ceremony for a spark that no one attended? He wished his grandfather and mother were here to ask.
“I’ll give you a few minutes of privacy to finish getting ready,” his dad said, slipping out of the room.
Stiles had chosen the cabin on the edge of the preserve for his claiming ceremony. He’d walk out, past the wards and into the forest, promising his soul to the Earth. In return, the four elements would power his spark. The more people who attended a claiming ceremony, the stronger the bond to the Earth, and the stronger his magic. The cabin felt like the natural place to begin the ceremony; it was where his journey began.
After a cursory glance, Stiles slipped the paper back into his pocket. He sighed. It was probably better if no one came. He knew how he’d appear to anyone who bothered to look. Unfinished. Unformed. A poor investment. As he pulled the hood over his head, he turned toward the doorway and found his father standing there, mouth open and brow furrowed. “What is it?” Stiles asked. He held his arms out to the sides and looked down at the floor-length robe, searching for lint or stains. “What’s wrong?”
“No, it’s… Someone’s here.”
Stiles blinked. “Huh? Who? ” They didn’t know anyone in the supernatural community, and a claiming ceremony wasn’t exactly something you could post a Facebook event for or send Evites to.
“I’m not sure who they are,” Noah said. “Or what they are.”
“They?” Stiles’ heart sped up. “There’s more than one?”
“Four,” his dad said as Stiles brushed past him out the door. “There’s four.”
And he wasn’t exaggerating. Four people stood outside the cabin, all wearing black leather jackets. The sole woman had yellow-blonde hair that curled down her back, alabaster skin, and fire-engine red lipstick. She stood at the tree line between two of the men. On her left stood a tall, thin man with sharp cheekbones on a clean-shaven face and angelic dark blonde curls. A burly, dark-skinned man stood at attention on her right. His shaved head, his features smooth, and the confident way he held himself made Stiles think of military officers.
Stiles skidded to a stop before the fourth visitor, robe flung off one shoulder and his hood falling halfway across his flushed face. This close, Stiles could tell they were almost the same height, though Stiles couldn’t fill out a leather jacket the way this man did even if he spent every day in the gym. His black hair looked impossibly soft, and his five o’clock shadow looked deliciously rough. Stiles’ fingers tingled, but it wasn’t from magic. It was pure want.
It took him a moment to notice the outstretched hand extending from a too-long jacket sleeve, offering him something. Stiles glanced down to find a sprig of orange foxgloves wrapped in a white cloth.
And just like that, he was ten years old again, his grandfather by his side, showing him the way.
It took him a moment to reign in his emotions, but when Stiles finally looked up from the flowers, a pair of hard green-gold eyes stared back at him. The same eyes that haunted him for years. “How did you know it was me?”
“I could smell you on the flowers. And the foxes told me.” Both statements should be alarming, but to Stiles, they made perfect sense. It was like the wróżki handprints inside the blossoms; Stiles had left his mark on this man long ago, and his magic had brought him home safe.
“I’m Derek Hale,” he continued and nodded toward his betas. “That’s Boyd, Erica, and Isaac. We’re not much, right now.” Derek tipped up his chin but spoke the words like an apology. “But we’re trying. I’m trying.”
Unfinished. Unformed. A poor investment.
“You’re perfect,” Stiles replied. Over Derek’s shoulder, Erica smirked at him.
Behind him on the cabin porch, his father loudly cleared his throat. “Today is Stiles’ claiming ceremony,” Noah said, the words stiff in his mouth. “It’d be an honor if you joined us.”
Derek smiled, his human teeth small and white, and the weight on Stiles’ shoulders lightened. “We’d love to.”
“Okay, well,” Noah clapped his hands when Stiles and Derek just stood there, staring at each other, “let’s get a move on.”
“Lead the way,” Derek said, his betas coming up behind him.
Stiles adjusted his robe and hood and walked north through the trees, a pack of werewolves at his back, their footsteps muffled. He smiled and thought of his mom, his grandfather, and foxglove-slippered paws.
Maybe he’d fit into this life after all.
