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“Move!”
It was the only warning Stiles had before he was crash tackled into unforgiving concrete. Quite suddenly up was down, down was immediate, and Derek was on top of him, snarling somewhere over his head. He barely had time to check for missing limbs before Derek pulled them off the ground and they were running again, hurtling down a dirty corridor in a conveniently abandoned warehouse.
Why was it always the warehouses?
They slowed to a stop when they reached an intersecting passage, Derek cocking his head to listen, and Stiles used the reprieve to lean against the wall and re-inflate his lungs.
“Did you have to bruise every rib?” Stiles wheezed, hands braced across his torso. “Couldn’t have left one or two untouched, just for funsies?”
“Would you have preferred me letting her blast your head off?” Derek growled, squinting in the opposite direction. “Because I’ll keep that in mind for next time.”
“Who said there’d be a next time?” Stiles yelped indignantly and Derek turned around just to raise a sardonic eyebrow.
Which was precisely the moment that Scott and Erica came crashing through a nearby door.
“Did you find her?” Scott asked frantically before noticing Stiles and making a beeline towards him.
“We had her cornered,” Stiles began, slapping at Scott’s probing fingers, “but then – ”
“But then someone needed rescuing and she got away,” Derek interrupted pissily.
“Oi rack off!”
Everyone seemed to pause in unison and Derek and Erica shot Stiles matching sets of condescending eyebrows.
“Oi rack off?” Erica drawled with obvious amusement. “Who are you, Crocodile Dundee?”
Scott, who was still trying to wriggle his hands under Stiles’ shirts to assess the damage, smothered a hysterical giggle into Stiles’ collar bone.
“Shut the fuck up,” Stiles hissed into his stupid floppy hair.
Unfortunately Erica was already eyeing him up with unholy glee, and Stiles spent a desperate few moments scrambling for a distraction before one was provided in the form of Isaac and Boyd loping around the corner.
“Anything?” Derek demanded and both boys shook their heads.
Erica opened her mouth, most likely intent on harassing Stiles further, but before she could get a word out a piercing scream came from deeper inside the warehouse.
And then they were running again, tearing through a maze of disused rooms and unlit hallways while this tortured sound rose and fell around them.
“Kira,” Scott barked, taking a sharp left through what appeared to be a collapsed wall.
The rest of the pack followed his lead, steadily gaining speed until they burst into a room with metal walls. Just seconds later, Allison and Kira came flying in after them.
“Are you okay?” several voices asked at once.
Scott and Isaac were looking at Kira and Allison, Allison and Kira were looking at Erica, and Stiles was left looking at everyone in confusion.
“We heard you screaming,” Scott said, giving Kira a physical once over like he had to Stiles.
“We thought that was Erica,” Allison said, reaching out to grasp Erica’s hand.
“Actually it was me,” an unfamiliar voice rang out, and Stiles whipped around to find a woman standing in the doorway.
She was entirely unassuming, wearing mom jeans and sensible shoes with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, and Stiles wouldn’t pick her out of a crowd if it weren’t for the tattoos wound around her fingers, extending all the way up her arms until they disappeared under a knit cardigan. They were navy blue and forest green and they writhed across her skin, undulating and coiling like living things.
Derek snarled and launched himself across the room only to have the door slammed in his face. He kicked and punched and clawed and huffed and puffed and the door stayed closed, barely a dent in it.
Finally he turned back around, knuckles and nails bloodied, with a defeated slump to his shoulders.
“We’re locked in.”
“Tell us something we don’t know, Captain Obvious,” Stiles muttered, and then quickly shut up again when Derek’s eyebrows dipped into murder territory.
“Um, guys?” Scott piped up. “I think we’re in a freezer.”
Isaac whimpered.
Stiles punched Scott in the chest and pretended it hurt him more than it did Stiles’ hand.
“Sorry,” Scott murmured.
“There’s no signal in here,” Boyd cut in lowly, phone in one hand, the other on Isaac’s shoulder.
Derek huffed through his nose and strode further into the dank room, using his phone flash to illuminate the corners.
“Spread out,” he ordered. “Look for windows or joins in the walls, anything that might be weak enough for us to force through it.”
They fanned out around the room, each taking a section to inspect, and left Isaac sitting dead centre, equidistant from all four walls.
As Stiles searched, rapping his knuckles against the metal panels and sweeping his flash along the top of the wall, the way his breath hung heavy and opaque in the air kept him unpleasantly aware of their predicament.
After a few frantic minutes in which Stiles’ overactive brain ran through every worst case scenario with increasing panic, Kira finally found something.
It was a ventilation shaft, and entirely too small for any of them to have a hope of fitting into.
“Stiles?”
“Yeah, buddy?” Stiles replied distractedly, still frowning at the small grate just below the ceiling.
When he got no verbal reply he looked over and found Scott staring at him pointedly.
Stiles laughed disbelievingly, just slightly too high-pitched. “Dude, come on.”
But Scott was completely, frustratingly serious.
“I can’t fit in there,” Stiles hissed, stepping closer to Scott and ducking his chin, even though he knew everyone in the room could hear him anyway.
“Bro, you used to hide inside the bottom drawer of my desk and scare the shit out of me,” Scott accused. Which was true and also hilarious.
“You could fit inside a desk drawer?” Erica asked incredulously. Stiles ignored her.
“Yeah but that was years ago, way before you turned furry, I’ll have grown since then,” Stiles protested, avoiding more than one curious gaze. Even Isaac had walked over, his face a mask of curiosity though his grip on Allison’s hand was white-knuckled.
“And anyway,” he continued staring at Scott with wide eyes, “I need room to move, there’s no way that shaft will be big enough.”
“Not if you hop, but if you shift your weight to your forepaws and do that little shuffle like you used to then I think it’ll work.”
“How will I even get up – ”
“I can lift you!”
“What the hell are you two talking about?” Derek growled, his eyebrows like storm clouds over his face.
Stiles sighed. And then groaned. And then made his own little growling sound, scrubbing angry hands over his hair.
“You know I wouldn’t ask if we had any other option,” Scott said earnestly and Stiles did, he did know that.
“Ask what,” Derek exploded, and was once again ignored.
Stiles turned his back on everyone and screwed up his eyes, taking deep, calming breaths and blocking out the confused sputtering from behind him. He stripped off his hoodie and over shirt, toed out of his shoes and socks, and then stood still.
He exhaled slowly, searching his body, at the base of his skull and the bottom of his lungs, reaching for that feeling. The twitchiness, the inherent skittishness, the assumed helplessness and the hidden power.
When he found it he almost didn’t recognize it, having kept it dormant for so many years. It was familiar, but distantly so, like summer winds and fresh grass and warm granite under his palms.
He let it overtake him, let it pull him down, and when he opened his eyes again his head was inside his jeans.
“Whaaaat the hell.” Isaac’s voice came from far above him.
Scott, being the best bro to ever bro, helped him out of his clothes.
“Oh my god,” Kira breathed.
Everyone looked stunned. Derek looked vaguely horrified. He was staring at Stiles like he’d just grown another head. Which was completely unfair because he’d only grown a tail. And disproportionately large hind legs. And pretty big ears and who the fuck was Derek to judge, anyway? He was a freaking werewolf.
“Oh my god!” Erica squealed and crouched down to rub Stiles ears between her fingers.
Stiles bit her.
“He’s…” Derek sounded dazed and breathy, which amused Stiles to no end and he bounced up and down on his toes a few times. “He’s a baby kangaroo.”
“Dude,” Scott said sounding appropriately offended. Best bro ever, seriously. “He’s not a kangaroo, he’s a rock wallaby.”
“Is there a difference?” Derek asked, still sounding thrown, and Stiles braced himself back on his tail and kicked Derek hard with both feet, right in the shin.
“Jesus Christ.” Derek hopped around on one leg and Stiles was inordinately pleased with himself.
“He’s a were-wallaby,” Allison said faintly, and Scott nodded proudly, looking at Stiles with fond eyes.
Besides his parents, Scott was the only person who’d ever known about Stiles’ marsupial affliction. Which made the whole werewolf revelation a lot easier to swallow.
“How exactly did he become a were-wallaby?” Boyd asked, always the most pragmatic of the pack.
“His mom and dad took him on vacation to visit his Great Uncle Bart and he got bitten,” Scott explained with a little shrug of his shoulder, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Which, really, it kind of was. How the hell else would one become a were-wallaby?
Erica collapsed against Boyd’s chest cackling in delight. “Trust you, Stilinski, to get attacked by the least dangerous animal on a continent filled to bursting with snakes and spiders and crocodiles. This is the best day of my life!”
And that is a wildly inaccurate and entirely too simplistic assessment of the situation. Every animal in Australia is dangerous, okay, all of them. Fuck, most of the plants can kill, Stiles was lucky to come home as relatively unscathed as he did.
Stiles pinned his ears back and hoped menacingly towards Erica’s wedged boots.
She cooed at him.
“Oh god, you’re just precious, aren’t you?”
Hell to the no, Stiles was a ferocious beast. To prove his point, Stiles rocked back and kicked Erica in the ankle.
“Fucking shit! What are those legs made out of?” Boyd rolled his eyes and wrapped an arm around Erica’s waist to keep her upright.
“Okay, guys, Stiles is a very scary were-wallaby, can we get back to the point now?” Kira cut in, with a jerk of her head towards Isaac who was beginning to look pale and clammy.
Everyone sobered up and Scott reached down to Stiles, lifting him with both hands.
“Alright, buddy, you got this.” Scott scritched behind Stiles’ shoulder blades and Stiles would forever deny how comforting he found it. “Just find a place to get out of the vent, shift back, and come let us out of here.”
He ripped the grate off the vent and began lifting Stiles towards it when Derek suddenly growled from behind them.
Stiles twisted his head around to find Derek looking awkward. More awkward than usual.
“Just, if the witch sees you, run like hell.” A strangled sound choked out of the back of his throat. “Or, hop like hell, I guess.”
And fuck that, Stiles bounds majestically, thank you very much.
Like Derek could read his thoughts, he rolled his eyes and huffed. “Just stay safe, alright?”
Stiles reached out with one forepaw and bopped Derek on the nose. Simply because he could and because Derek’s reaction face was as hilarious as Stiles had been hoping for.
Everyone else murmured words of good luck and then Stiles was deposited into the ventilation shaft.
He shuffled along slowly, swinging his back legs forward more than hopping on them, trying to keep as quiet as he could. It took him awhile, pausing to listen every couple of minutes to make sure he hadn’t attracted any unwanted attention, but eventually Stiles reached an opening in the shaft that wasn’t inside the freezer room. He turned around and kicked the grate out with his hind legs, freezing when its clatter echoed around the empty corridor.
Navigating his own way down from the vent was a bit more complicated without a handy werewolf at his disposal, but Stiles was not a rock wallaby for nothing. Rock wallabies are essentially the Australian equivalent of mountain goats, so Stiles maneuvered his way down with a graceful leap and a tumbling fall that no one will ever know about.
Shifting back to human form when he was right-side-up on the ground once more, Stiles covered his junk with his hands and tiptoed down the hallway.
Rounding the corner he came face-to-face with an irate Lydia, a bored Jackson, and a put upon witch. Literally. Because Jackson was sitting on her.
“Why do I have to do everything myself?” Lydia snapped.
“What the fuck, Stilinski! Why are you naked?”