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If anyone asked her, Marion would honestly not be able to give any good reason for doing what she did. It was stupid. Incredibly stupid. Stupid and reckless, and dangerous, and had she been murdered in her sleep, she would’ve accepted full responsibility from the afterlife because, again, it was incredibly stupid. There was no universe in which a single woman, on vacation alone in an isolated cabin in the woods, taking in two bloody and beat up men was a good idea. None.
She’d known this at the time; she hadn’t had a momentary lapse in judgment (debatable) or a sudden blossoming faith in the power of love and good of people. She’d looked at the two guys stumbling through the chilly woods, both beaten and bloody and looking like they’d been kicked around a busy freeway for a few hours, and thought I should run. Now. Very far.
She watched horror movies occasionally, she knew how this story ended.
But then one of them collapsed and didn’t move, and the stark fear and worry in the other’s voice hit something deep in her heart that was currently growing three sizes in her chest. Though it might’ve just been the paralyzing fear in her throat. They probably felt similar.
Fuck.
Marion looked down at the small bundle of firewood in her arms, up at the pair, back down to the firewood, and told herself to just take her firewood back into her rented cabin and leave well enough alone while sipping irish coffee in front of a cozy fire. With the door firmly locked and the couch pushed up against it.
She should. That was the smart and safe thing to do.
She dropped the logs and started jogging—away from cabin, right towards the two mystery men who looked like they were straight out of The Walking Dead. Maybe. She’d never actually seen the show because she was a little squeamish, but it seemed like the kind of scenario in which a lot of characters ended up covered in blood.
Kind of like the guys she was running towards.
This was not one of the brightest moments in her life—which was probably about to come to a swift and bloody end.
“Fuck, Stiles, come on,” the conscious one was pleading quietly, cradling the other’s head firmly and trying to get a response. It wasn’t working, even Marion could see that as she approached; his eyes stayed closed and his head moved easily with the motion of his friend’s hands. “Stiles, don't—”
“Is everything okay?” Marion called for lack of a better introduction. Of course everything wasn’t okay, a guy was dying on the forest floor.
The man’s head snapped up at her voice, and she was suddenly glad she was still standing ten feet away (she wasn’t a complete idiot, she wasn't about to stand within grabbing distance). His face was wild and desperate, eyes hard and and guarded, and he looked like he was one false step away from ripping her head off.
“I could call an ambulance?” she tried, her voice an embarrassing wobbling squeak that barely made it out of her throat. She was suddenly all too aware of the blood coating the man’s hands and forearms, his shirt and pants, the blood-soaked side of the unconscious guy who looked far too young to be in this situation.
“I can handle it,” the man answered shortly. He was slowly and subtly moving over his friend, blocking him from Marion’s sight. Hunching over him like a guard dog.
“I really don’t think you can,” Marion blurted out before she could stop and really make herself truly understand that it was a stupid idea to offend a man covered in blood. Oh well, just another in the ever growing list of stupid ideas to etch into her headstone.
“My car isn’t far, I could drive you to the nearest hospital if money’s an issue?” She couldn’t think of any other reason for someone to refuse an ambulance when their friend was wearing that much of his own blood. In the middle of nowhere. With no other mode of transportation in sight.
The man’s gaze softened at that, and he looked somewhat less like he would murder Marion for so much as glancing at his friend. Brother.Prisoner?
“It’s not that, we just,” he looked down at the face held gently between his hands and his thumb brushed back and forth against the man’s cheek absently, leaving a streak of blood. The younger man didn’t move or acknowledge the touch, didn’t so much as twitch. “We can’t.” He finally settled on firmly, like that made it any more logical to an outsider. “Thank you, though. We’ll be fine.”
He didn’t look like he was going to be fine. He looked like he was about to shit bricks out of fear, and his friend like he was seconds from death, pale and grey under the blood on his face.
Marion sighed, both at his stupidity and her own growing refusal to just trust him and leave them to it.
He just looked so pathetic and terrified, curled up small over his friend who was definitely minutes from death. And she couldn’t very well leave a guy to bleed out less than half a mile away while she settled down to make herself dinner in front of a probably-not-roaring fire that they both looked like they would benefit from. Seriously, how long had they been out in this forty degree weather? There was nothing around there they could’ve come from, how were they not already dead?
Maybe if she went back inside she could just call an ambulance anyway; it might make it in time from the city an hour away, the roads weren’t busy in the area and there wasn’t any snow yet to slow them down.
But that still meant doing something with the pair of them in the meantime. Leaving them out in the cold definitely wouldn’t help their chances…
Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do—
“There’s a first aid kit back at my cabin.” Why did you do that? “I don’t know how well-stocked it is or if it will even help at all, but…” she trailed off and just kind of shrugged awkwardly.
She was about to be murdered.
The guy looked up again, surprised and wary. He stared for a long, uncomfortable moment, scrutinizing Marion’s face while she tried to look casual and like her stomach wasn’t creeping up her throat, but then his companion let out a shaky groan and Marion was all but forgotten.
“Stiles? Stiles, open your eyes, come on.”
Even Marion found herself holding her breath as Stiles’ eyelids fluttered before cracking open and blinking in the daylight.
His friend sagged over him as he let out a labored sigh of relief
“Oh, fuck…” Stiles croaked. His hand came up clumsily, moving towards his bloody side, but the other man stopped him.
“Don’t touch it," he chided gently, his voice shaking though he acted like it wasn’t.
“Not what you said last night.”
“Very different circumstances.”
This was all taking on a very denial in the face of death kind of tone, and Marion was not on board with that in the least. She took a step closer and the man’s eyes snapped up to her. She raised her eyebrows in what she hoped was a judging yet welcoming gesture, because she was not letting this guy die in the woods without doing anything.
He looked properly chastised and like he was considering his options, then Stiles started to pass out again and that apparently sealed the deal for him. He nodded to Marion, then started gathering Stiles up in his arms with a whispered and frantic, just stay with me a little longer.
Marion faltered, having expected to have to help carry the guy in some way because he was practically the same size as the one literally doing all the heavy lifting, but he just straightened like it was no big deal and looked to her to lead the way. No pressure or anything.
She turned back the way she came, towards the small cabin and the large stockpile of firewood along the side, and started back, hyper aware of the man behind her.
“I’m Marion, by the way,” she tossed over her shoulder, and she almost completely missed it when he responded with Derek.
It wasn’t actually a very long walk back to the cabin, but they were moving slow, Derek following ten steps behind with Stiles in his arms. He was talking to him quietly, Marion could hear the rumble of his voice, but she was too far ahead to make out what he was saying. She was still on edge with it all, but the fact that Derek seemed to be completely focused on Stiles made her settle a little; she didn't think he was watching her for weaknesses or anything.
Or at least, she was settling until the cabin came into view and she realized she had no idea what to do with the two strays she was dragging home with her.
It was a tiny little cabin, the listing had said it was "cozy", with just a front room, kitchen, and bathroom downstairs, and a tiny bedroom in the attic that even Marion could just barely stand up straight in. There was no way they would be able to get Stiles up the narrow staircase, so the couch it was. She wasn’t all that fond of putting strange men between her and the exit, but she could fit through the attic window. It wasn’t a tall house, she could jump and survive if she needed to. Probably.
She unlocked the front door and was proud of herself for only hesitating a second before letting Derek in. There was no turning back, he was in the cabin and this was happening.
Marion scurried around him, trying to clear magazines, a couple dishes, and an end table out of the way before he tripped and dropped Stiles. How had the room gotten so messy in two days, honestly. All she'd done was—yeah okay, all she'd done was eat over her laptop within the six foot charger radius around the only working plug in the cabin.
“Can you hold him a little longer?” she asked over his shoulder as she kicked an empty soda bottle away. “The couch is a pull-out, it should be more comfortable.”
Derek nodded once. “I’ve got him.”
Yeah, he sure looked like he had him. He’d been holding a full grown man in his arms for a good ten minutes, while walking, and it didn’t look like the weight was even registering. There wasn’t so much as a tremble of strain in his nicely defined yet blood covered biceps.
Who the fuck were these guys?
She decided not to think about it and instead tossed the couch cushions off to the side in a heap. It took a few tugs to get the pull-out actually pulled out of the couch, wasn’t that always the case with the damn things, but she got it with minimal humiliation on her part and even thought to hastily put down towels on one side. That guy was covered in a lot of blood, and stains like that on the pull out would be really hard to explain once it came time to get her security deposit back.
She stood back and Derek laid Stiles down on the towels, slowly and carefully, arranging his limbs so they were comfortable and tugging his stained shirt back down where it had ridden up.
No, not tugging it down, moving it to get to the stab wound in his side that was definitely where all the blood was coming from.
“Holy fuck!”
Derek’s head snapped up in surprise, face murderous, but Marion was too preoccupied by the oozing stab wound right in front of her. And the giant spike-looking-thing sticking out of it.
These guys were murderers! Gangsters! She didn’t know what the fuck gangsters would be doing this far out in the woods, but it wasn’t hard to guess: burying the body of the guy responsible for the stab wound.
“That bad?” Stiles joked weakly with a grin. She hadn't known he was still awake.
“It’s fine. Stop talking,” Derek answered shortly, kind of rudely considering Stiles was more or less bleeding out in front of him, but Stiles just huffed out a laugh quietly and then winced. Derek called him an idiot.
Marion just focused on shutting up and breathing through her nose.
“‘member what to do?” Stiles’ voice was quiet, breathed out on an exhale, and clearly only meant for Derek.
“Of course I do, stop talking.” Still a very gruff and rude tone to be using with someone in Stiles’ state. Shouldn’t he have been trying to comfort him at the very least? If not easing him into the afterlife? Which was where the entire situation looked to be heading?
“I need water, clean towels, and peroxide if you have it.” It took a long second to realize that Derek was talking to her now, face impatient and his hands around the base of the spike in Stiles’ side. “The first aid kit, and a needle and thread if it’s not in the kit already.”
Marion nodded and was already standing up to get it all before what he said fully registered.
“Wait, a need—you’re not going to stitch it up, are you?”
She actually took a step back from the force of his glare.
“What else would I be doing?” he snapped, which was definitely the wrong way to go about this conversation, because snapping at Marion when she was already panicking always just made her snap right back, as a number of her ex-employers could attest to.
“Oh gee, I don’t know,” she argued in a shitty tone, “stopping the bleeding and calling a fucking ambulance?”
“I already told you, that’s not an option!” Derek yelled, and Stiles jolted under his hands. He took a deep breath, his thumb brushed against Stiles’ stomach a few times, then he continued much calmer, “Can you please just trust me and help with this?”
Marion still wasn’t happy about what just happened, no one talked to her like that in her own damn rental house, but she could also recognize that everyone was stressed, Derek was clearly worried, and they had bigger things to worry about.
“Yes. I’ll be right back,” she replied in her own calm tone and turned.
The last time she heard before ducking into the kitchen was Stiles’ soft, “Don’t be a douche, Derek.”
*
After it was all said and done, Marion really didn’t know for sure how exactly the whole removing the spike and cleaning it all out went, because she was happy to say that it had all been completely blocked from her mind in a panicked and stressed blur. She might’ve also passed out once for a second, just a second, but what she did remember was holding a bowl of bloody water, Stiles unconscious again, and Derek threading the eye of a needle with steady hands.
“I’ll change the water,” she volunteered quickly, voice a lot more strained than she would’ve liked because he was about to stitch up a guy right in front of her. She picked up the bowl of pink water, reminded herself that it was only Kool Aid, and bolted to the kitchen to take a few deep breaths. It was colder in there without the fireplace, but she didn’t care because she just needed to breathe. Whoever the fuck Derek was, he was used to stitching up people. All she could think about was Silence of the Lambs and the lotion.
No, no, maybe he was a doctor. He seemed experienced, he wasn’t visibly panicking beyond his outburst earlier, he’d done this before; being a doctor was totally a valid explanation.
Hannibal Lecter was a doctor.
She tripped over the uneven threshold to the kitchen and bloody water splashed over the rim of the bowl and onto the linoleum.
Now she was going to have to clean that too. Lovely.
There was no way she was ever getting her deposit back on this place. Those towels had definitely not kept the blood off the couch, the towels themselves were beyond ruined, and she was considering throwing out every dish blood had touched—so every mixing bowl. She was going to spend as much replacing all of this as she did to rent the stupid shack.
She would never be able to use Airbnb again. Her profile would be trashed by the owner of the cabin, she’d basically destroyed the living room. There was blood soaked into the floorboards, she couldn’t exactly shrug it off as an accident.
That was there was I got here.
She shook her head at the thought of trying that, dumping out the bowl and rinsing it thoroughly before refilling it with warm water.
My period came early.
The place was owned by a man, and Joe kind of seemed like an idiot. He might buy it.
I found a dying animal and brought it inside to try and help.
Okay, she could make that one work. She’d seen a couple foxes earlier, was pretty sure she heard coyotes in the distance; she could play up that bleeding heart femininity Joe scoffed at when she’d made a face at the stuffed bobcat that she’d moved to the back of the closet immediately after he left.
She could lie. She was a great liar. This would work.
She shut off the faucet and carried the bowl slowly and a little unsteadily in her annoyingly shaking hands, careful not to spill any, and then sloshed it onto her socked feet when she stopped short in the doorway.
Derek was finished stitching, there was a gauze pad taped over Stiles’ side, and now he was carefully wiping blood and smears of mud from Stiles’ face, dragging the cloth around his temple with a practiced ease that was definitely worrying. But now Stiles was awake. He was talking quietly and smiling faintly up at Derek with a bleary adoration in his eyes that made Marion feel like the creepiest of voyeurs. And Derek was giving him a similar look back.
So not just a brothers in arms kind of deal.
Stiles looked over at the sound of water splashing against the floor, and stopped talking immediately. He shifted against his pillow, already on the defensive like he could actually fight off anyone in his current condition. He must not have remembered the fact that Marion had been right next to him for the last hour, he’d been pretty out of it.
Derek pressed his palm against his chest, keeping him from moving too much, then moved it up to the side of his neck.
“It’s fine, we’re okay,” he murmured to him. “She’s been helping a lot. She’s safe.“
That seemed to be all the reassurance Stiles needed, because he briefly looked over Derek’s face and then relaxed without protest. He still watched Marion warily as she approached, but he wasn’t straining himself anymore.
“I brought a fresh cloth,” Marion offered, setting down the new bowl of water on the coffee table.
Derek thanked her as they exchanged, and she couldn’t hold back the grimace when the very bloodstained and muddy cloth dropped into her hand. His mouth quirked up at the corner.
“Is there anything else you need right now?”
Please need something else, she screamed in her head, because she needed something to do right that moment, or she was going to freak out. She couldn’t be here at the moment; her brief reprieve in the kitchen had been so relieving that being back in the room with the bloody towels under Stiles and the strangers, and the giant bloody spike on the floor—it was just a little too much at the moment.
Derek looked to Stiles. “How’s the pain?”
Stupid question, all the first aid kit had was Tylenol—not exactly going to take care of the pain of a stab wound.
But Stiles just waved a hand loosely in Derek’s direction. “’s fine, don’t worry.” They both ignored Marion’s disbelieving hum. “Jus’ need sleep.”
His voice was starting to slur again, which made Derek’s eyes perk up.
“Stiles, no, don’t sleep yet.” He grabbed the still waving arm and Stiles frowned at him indignantly.
“Jus’ for a second.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No, that’s not sleeping, that’s passing out!”
“Close enough,” Stiles murmured stubbornly, and Marion found a slightly hysterical and totally inappropriate smile working its way onto her face.
“Stiles, we need to get your blood sugar up, just stay awake a little longer.”
“You stay awake a little longer,” he muttered back petulantly, and tried to turn on his side away from Derek before he was physically stopped.
“You can’t feel it but it’s still there,” Derek said softly and firmly, like it was something he was constantly reminding him of. “You can’t go to sleep yet.”
The moment was getting uncomfortably intimate, with quiet words and loaded eye contact and slightly desperate touches on Derek’s end.
“I’ll find him something to eat,” Marion announced weakly, and then retreated back to the kitchen like a coward. She just needed to breathe, and getting food was something she could handle.
They suggested like, juice and cookies after giving blood, right? Getting a cookie was supposed to be part of the deal, and hell, she had cookies. She stocked up for these two weeks like it was the apocalypse, with no intention of having to venture back into town for supplies. If they needed it, she had it.
Maybe.
Standing at the open fridge, looking for post-blood loss kinds of foods, she realized that her idea of stocking up for the apocalypse was apparently eating like a college student again. There was a pile of instant ramen on the counter, the cupboard was all cookies, and the only thing in the vegetable drawer was bagged salad. A solid third of the fridge was alcohol, the really fruity stuff made to fuck up the young with their high tolerances and no hangovers.
(Drinking for inspiration worked for Faulkner, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Or maybe he’d just been a raging alcoholic. She couldn’t remember for sure, she’d never really been interested in literature in college, something she was seriously regretting with the whole writing a novel thing.)
She knew there was juice in there somewhere, she specifically remembered thinking the orange juice without pulp would be the best mixer, and she hadn’t even gotten to the drinking portion of the week so it was definitely still there.
It was, hidden behind the precariously stacked mountain of sugary alcohol, so she poured half a glass and grabbed the knock off Samoa cookies that weren’t as good as the Girl Scouts but worked well enough to tide her over between cookie seasons, and went back out. It was a good cause, she could share her knock off Samoas.
Derek took the juice and made sure Stiles had a firm hold on the glass before letting go of it, then accepted the package of cookies. He handed them back immediately, unopened.
“He’s allergic to coconut.”
Marion blinked. “Oh, okay, I’ve got chocolate chip?”
Derek nodded, and Marion returned to the kitchen to find the others. She tried not to be too bitter about how her last boyfriend of two years had never remembered that she was deathly allergic to shellfish, even after trying to take her to Red Lobster three times.
The fact that he thought Red Lobster was a date night kind of restaurant said a lot about how well that relationship went.
When she came back out, Stiles was nodding off again—or trying to, anyway. There was something of a standoff happening on the couch; a low and steady childish whine from Stiles, nose scrunched up in tired displeasure at Derek, who was holding the now-quarter full glass of juice like it was a threat.
“If you drink it now and eat something, you’ll feel better when you wake up.” He was lecturing. Stiles looked wholly unimpressed with the deal, but he was already more animated than Marion had seen him yet. Miraculously, actually, she was half expecting him to suddenly bite it any second.
“You’re usually begging me to sleep, and the one time I want to…”
Derek rolled his eyes but he still looked too fond and relieved to actually be annoyed. “You can in a few minutes, just eat a few cookies and finish your juice.”
Derek didn’t look horribly concerned anymore; he was worried and mothering Stiles like he was actually his mother, but he wasn’t tense and terrified anymore. The danger had passed, it seemed, and Marion’s adrenaline from the whole night was reacting accordingly. Meaning she was about to crash spectacularly and needed to sit down before she fell down. Preferably somewhere she couldn’t see blood or Stiles or Derek.
I need a lot of alcohol and a corner to break down in, she decided, and left the pair to stumble back into the kitchen. Back to safety.
But once she was staring at the pile of alcohol in the fridge, she realized it would be a really stupid idea to get any type of drunk while there were two strange men alone with her in the cabin.
But she really needed a drink.
Irish coffee it was.
She was just pouring whiskey into her mug when Derek followed her into the kitchen carrying the bloodied bowls and cloths. She was annoyed at the intrusion into her safehouse for all of three seconds before she got a good look at his face and realized he probably needed the coffee and alcohol just as much as she did.
Marion held up the half empty bottle of Jack and shook it temptingly.
Derek didn’t quite smile, but there was a hint of it when he nodded, then he moved to the sink to deal with everything in his hands.
Hopefully he didn’t mind a very whiskey-heavy coffee, because her pouring hand was feeling generous.
“I’m sorry for earlier,” he said abruptly, and it took a second for Marion to catch on. He didn’t look up when he continued, focused on running a soap sponge over a bowl. “For yelling. Letting us come here probably saved his life, so thank you.”
“Um,” she fished around for something meaningful to say in response, but what did someone say to that? You did everything, really? Just doing my job? Anyone would’ve done it? All in a day’s work? Why was her mind going there, this wasn’t her job! “No problem.” She settled on completely by default, and then regretted it immediately. “How’s Stiles?”
That sounded better, less dismissive of their very stressful day.
Derek paused in his washing and tilted his head towards the doorway like he could hear. “Sleeping.”
Marion nodded, and added coffee to a couple large fingers of Jack in Derek’s mug. It was a very irish coffee, it turned out.
But then it hit her that he probably shouldn’t be drinking this much in case something happened to Stiles during the night. She certainly wouldn’t be able to help if he suddenly started dying, and Derek was the only person within a mile radius with any kind of medical knowledge, however he got it. He couldn’t have been overly worried about that happening if he’d accepted her offer for alcohol in the first place, but he did look tense and the aluminum bowl definitely had a new dent that hadn’t been there when Marion last held it.
“He’s going to be okay, right?” she blurted out, after a long moment debating with herself. “You’ve done this before?”
Derek paused for a second, then started scrubbing even harder as he responded quietly, “Unfortunately.”
Not ominous at all.
Marion thought briefly about just taking the poor bowl out of his hands—it wasn’t quite a circle anymore—but didn’t want to find out what he would do with nothing to focus on.
“Do I even want to ask what you guys were doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” Covered in blood, she added in her head.
“We were hiking,” he answered shortly. “Stiles fell and got hurt, and I couldn’t get any cell reception. We were trying to get to the main road.”
Well that was lie.
He finally put down the bowl and sponge. The bowl sat crooked on the bottom of the sink.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked in return, fixing her with a scrutinizing look. “You clearly don’t live here, but I can’t think of one reason to come here of all places.”
Shit. She hated admitting this part. This was half the reason she didn’t tell anyone she was even taking off to a remote cabin in the woods for a week—and yes, she had realized the second she laid eyes on Derek and Stiles how stupid that was of her. This was a bad horror movie, right down to the setting. And she wasn’t even the main character of this horror movie, she was the victim in the first five minutes who kicked off the story before theactual main characters got there.
“I was trying to find a little peace and quiet with zero distractions to get the second draft of my novel written.”
He looked surprised but he just nodded and didn’t push the issue. She was grateful he didn’t ask about it; she was smack dab in the middle of a crushing spiral of self-doubt, and she hated everything about the first draft. Thus the difficulty at getting started on the second.
“I guess we ruined that plan,” he said wryly, and reached for the next aluminum bowl. Marion intercepted and pushed a mug of hot coffee at him. She didn’t need to pay for any more replacement bowls.
“At least you two aren’t boring.”
Derek’s eyebrow quirked up but he didn’t try to argue as they sipped their drinks in silence.
It was already creeping into two in the morning, and as much as Marion liked staying up late, it had been something of a stressful day. She needed to fall face first into bed, but her parents had raised her to be a good host, and that meant finding her guest a suitable place to sleep first. She wandered into the front room, trying to plan out a bed for Derek that wasn’t half bloody and full of stab victim, but aside from the armchair, there wasn’t anything she could think of beyond piling couch cushions on the floor.
“Um, are you okay sleeping next to him? I don’t have anywhere else…”
“I’m not going to sleep,” Derek interrupted, then added apologetically, “I need to make sure he’s okay.” He looked back over at Stiles, who was still completely dead to the world with his mouth hanging open unattractively. Derek just looked like that was exactly what he was looking for in life.
“Alright, uh, you can have anything in the kitchen, keep an eye on the fire. Feel free to take a bath?” The cabin didn’t have a shower. It was rustic.
But like, rustic with wifi.
Derek nodded, ever the man of few words, then headed back over to Stiles while Marion made a dash for the stairs. She just needed to be alone, process for a second, and then pass out for a week. At this point she didn’t even care if the two of them cleaned out everything she owned and stole her car or something, she just needed to sleep.
But even with the warm buzz of whiskey sitting heavy in her limbs, Marion didn’t so much sleep as sit on her bed and stare at the door the entire night. It was locked and right at the top of the stairs, so getting any momentum to break it down from the outside would be difficult, and the steps were rickety and loud so she would have some warning if Derek came to kill her in the night, though it wasn’t like she would really be able to do anything about it if he did. He was twice her size and all muscle, whereas she spent most of her time in front of a laptop, binge eating Oreos.
She was exhausted, she hadn’t been lying, but she was so keyed up with strangers in the house that she couldn’t actually sleep. Instead, she listened for everything, hyper aware of every creak, clunk, and drip within the old cabin. She heard the bath running, the toilet flush, Derek’s footsteps back in the front room, his quick trip to the kitchen for a glass of water, and the rumble of his voice through the grate in the floor as he talked quietly. She couldn’t hear Stiles replying, but there seemed to be some kind of conversation happening because Derek didn’t seem the type to talk to himself.
She would probably not be killed if she went to get a drink—anyone as gentle with another person as Derek was with Stiles couldn’t possibly be capable of cold blooded murder, but she wasn’t a psychologist. Who the fuck knew what the guy was capable of, she also wasn’t an expert on sociopaths. Hannibal Lecter had seemed like a nice guy too, and look where that got his victims.
Eaten. That’s where.
Fuck, what if they were cannibals. They were both covered in a lot of blood earlier, it couldn’t only be from them, especially since Derek had turned out to be fine under all of it and Stiles wasn’t dead from blood loss.
No, no. Do not even go there, she scolded herself, and then stubbornly laid down just to prove to herself that everything was fine. Derek and Stiles weren’t bad guys, they’d just needed a little help. Or a lot of it, like a place to crash, a glass of juice, and emergency surgery.
Not out of the ordinary in the least.
She swallowed loudly in the silent room and realized she forgot to bring up a glass of water with her.
She wasn’t really thirsty anyway.
*
Marion was dying.
She could barely swallow she was so thirsty and Derek had taken a bath at some point because she heard the water rushing through the pipes, and so she also had to go to the bathroom, but she refused to leave her attic. She was safe up there, she would be fine. She could handle it.
She made it to five in the morning, when she became so desperate that her assurances that she could do without became assurances that Derek probably wouldn’t really kill her if she got a glass of water. It was another half hour until she managed to pep talk herself into actually going down to the kitchen, which was stupid when probable murderers were in the same house, but waiting to possibly be murdered was stressful. It really dried out the mouth, alright?
She eased open the door, which squeaked loudly, of course. Every stair creaked ominously on the way down, and her heart was thudding in her chest because her mind was stuck on the image of Derek waiting right around the corner with a knife. She should’ve taken the knives upstairs with her.
The fire was reduced to embers with the faintest glow but the table lamp was still on, which was the only reason she didn’t trip on the last awkwardly tall step, and Stiles was deep asleep and lying in almost the exact same position she’d last seen him in. He was cleaned up aside from a little blood still matted in his hair at his temple, and the blanket covering him up to his chest made him look surprisingly normal and unstabbed considering the day they’d all had. Derek however, had fallen asleep after all, and was curled up against Stiles, face tucked into his neck and one arm under the blanket where they were definitely holding hands. He looked young and vulnerable and just, content. She hadn’t seen him look anything other than angrily worried about the situation.
Marion stared for a second, because like this they didn’t look like they could possibly murder her in any universe. They looked like friends she’d invited to stay the weekend, crashing on her couch together until she brought them fresh coffee in the morning before they went, like, canoeing for the day. The visual was too weird and confusingly sad, so she just turned into the kitchen, ignoring the pile of dirty dishes, half of which had held blood recently, until tomorrow.
She was so focused on ignoring the mess that it wasn’t until she was walking back out with her water that she realized the mess actually just wasn’t there. It was all clean, with bowls and plates drying in the dish drainer, food put away, not a drop of blood or stained towel in sight, and even her mountain of ramen was stacked neatly.
Derek was the most helpful and courteous possible-murderer ever.
Armed with her large glass of water, she crept back out into the front room and along the wall towards the stairs. She glanced back over at the pair and her heart jumped when she realized Derek was quietly watching her, eyes lidded but still alert.
She gave him an awkward smile and lifted her glass a little—she had no idea why, it was clear what she’d been doing the whole time—and then she definitely didn’t run up the stairs.
*
The next morning was better, if only because Marion was too exhausted to be worried about being murdered. She shuffled downstairs at 8:30 when she finally gave up on sleep for good, determined to have her coffee whether she died or not. She didn’t care if Derek followed her around with a knife at her throat, she was having coffee, damn it.
But even with her resignation towards potential death, her heart still jolted when she reached the bottom of the stairs and didn’t see Derek where she expected him to be, which was right next to Stiles on the pull out.
Instead, Stiles was still sleeping (his chest was moving as he breathed, she watched closely for a second to make sure), curled awkwardly around a pillow, and alone. It was weird to see him alone, Derek hadn’t left him for longer than a few minutes in all the time they’d been there, always there like a guard dog.
Aaaand there he was, coming out of the kitchen in his slightly less bloody clothing, carrying two mugs of fresh coffee. He tipped his head back where he’d come from so as not to disturb Stiles and when she followed, he handed the orange one to Marion like that had been the plan all along and he’d been expecting her. She didn’t know how and didn’t care, she wanted that coffee.
“How is he?” she whispered, nodded towards the front room.
“Better.”
No other details offered.
“We have someone coming to get us in a few hours,” he continued quietly, and Marion looked up from her coffee in surprise. That made sense, they probably didn’t have a car given the way they were wandering through the woods half dead, but the question of how they would be leaving never actually crossed her mind before.
Considering how many horrifying fantasies of being murdered had been swirling through her mind within the last twelve hours, she was surprised to realize she hadn’t been plotting ways to subtly kick them out and then drive home like a bat out of hell before they could come back to finish her off.
“I used your phone charger last night,” he added. “My phone was dead and Stiles’ phone got lost at some point.”
Boy, did these two have terrible luck. Stabbed in the woods in forty degree weather, in the middle of nowhere, with no phones. And Marion thought her luck was bad with every beer she opened foaming up all over her, every time, without fail.
Derek perked up suddenly, looking towards the doorway, and then he rolled his eyes and moved with purpose into the front room.
“Stiles, I told you to call me.”
“I’m fine, hands off!”
There was a quiet slap, open hand on shirt.
Marion couldn’t help it. She got up and followed, bringing her coffee with her, just in time to hear an annoyed protest of “dude, I got it!” and see Derek jolting out of the bathroom with Stiles’ hand flailing after him before the door slammed.
Derek just rolled his eyes to himself and crossed his arms, not moving a muscle. There was no doubt Stiles could feel his glare through the solid wood.
The door opened a long few minutes later to a shaky and pale Stiles.
“Okay, now I don’t got it,” he admitted, holding onto the doorframe and reaching for Derek with his free hand.
Derek didn’t so much as hesitate, ducking under Stiles’ good side and carefully helping him back to the couch. There were more quiet mutterings to each other as he eased him back against his pillow, and Marion made herself scarce to the kitchen again. She’d never met a couple who could make such small and innocent moments so intimate, so quickly—casual to voyeuristic in .6 seconds. Whoever their friends were, she didn’t envy them.
*
The only thing keeping Marion from hiding in the bedroom the entire morning was the fact that the only working outlet in the cabin was in the front room. She needed to email a few people, make sure they actually knew where she was and what to do if they didn’t hear from her within twelve hours, and also work on her damn novel. She had an internal deadline to meet, and last night’s excitement left her about thirty pages behind it.
So she parked herself in the armchair near the outlet, computer on her lap, and started working, making her way through her third cup of coffee before 10am.
It was nice, calm, even if Marion was horribly conscious of every clack of her typing in the silence, especially when she had to backspace two lines and was absolutely certain everyone knew it.
Derek was reading silently, holding up a trashy paperback he'd found next to the couch in one hand with the other arm looped back around Stiles’ head, his fingers raking slowly through his hair. It looked like heaven, frankly, because Marion loved it when people played with her hair, and Stiles apparently agreed. He was toeing the line between asleep and awake, dozing lightly against Derek’s shoulder. Every once in a while he would pry his eyes back open and stare blearily at Derek’s book like he was going to start reading too, but he always faded again within seconds.
Marion hoped they had days like this when they were at home; just relaxing on the couch, napping and reading, not getting stabbed by weird spikes in the deep woods. With no car. For unspecified reasons.
She was trying not to think about it too hard, it was just going to make her paranoid again and she really needed to focus on her writing.
And miraculously she did. She was so focused on not thinking about the pair less than ten feet away from her, she switched into full editor mode and whizzed through the next few hours without even realizing it. She was an editing machine, ruthlessly cutting paragraphs and that one shitty character she’d always hated, because she could finally make the plot work around him. She wasn’t a total failure of a writer after all!
“Ride’s here,” Derek announced mildly, but his voice cut through the silent room and made her jump.
She blinked up at him from the computer screen and stared while she switched gears again. His fingers were still tangled in Stiles’ hair, scratching absentmindedly. He didn’t look like he realized he was even doing it.
Marion stretched to look out the window, and her chest tightened when a fucking Sheriff’s Office SUV trundled around the bend in the driveway.
Derek and Stiles were fugitives. Fugitives that were entirely unconcerned with the fact that they were about to be arrested.
Dear God, she was about to be arrested too! As an accessory to something, or an accomplice, or—or something! It was a miracle she’d survived with them as long as she had, and now she was going down for helping two truly pathetic guys bleeding in the woods! They were some Bonnie and Clyde kind of duo, it explained everything! Those two even died out in the woods!
She was just trying to be a good samaritan, and now she was going to prison for it!
Her heart took off as two men got out of the car, one middle aged and in a tan deputy uniform, the other younger and probably around Stiles’ age, but not in uniform. They both stared up at the cottage for a minute, glanced at each other, and then started towards the porch.
It didn’t really look like an official arrest, but she was proud to say that she’d never witnessed one outside of television. She had no idea what to expect here.
Derek was still just sitting on the couch, relaxed as can be, though Marion could feel him glance over at her occasionally. She didn’t make any sudden movements, didn’t want to give him any ideas about taking her hostage, she just sat in her seat, tense and silently freaking out as she listened to two pairs of boots walk up the creaky front steps, and then jumped at the loud pounding on the door.
Stiles jolted awake at the sound but settled again when Derek muttered something and scratched lightly at his scalp. He didn’t look like he was planning on moving anytime soon, so Marion set her laptop to the side and went to the door.
The deputy—Sheriff, oh shit—took off his sunglasses and gave her a commiserating look.
“We hear you found something that belongs to us.”
She glanced back over at the pair on the couch—she was honestly still expecting Derek to appear behind her with a knife to her throat, or to shove her at the cops and run in the chaos—but he was still sitting with Stiles tucked under his arm. He was saying something quietly, and Stiles looked weirdly relieved to be in his way to prison.
Marion turned back to the cops.
“Are these guys criminals?” she whispered. “Because I just found them out in the woods, I didn’t knowingly harbor fugitives, or help them with any kind of illegal activity, I was just trying to help them out.”
The younger guy was trying not to laugh and the cop looked like he had a headache.
“Don’t worry, ma'am, I’m not here to arrest them. This is a fatherly duty call.”
Marion couldn’t help the sigh of relief.
“Oh. Well in that case, right this way.” She gestured grandly into the tiny cabin, as if they could possibly miss seeing the pair in plain sight. Both of her newest guests looked like they might fall over in relief, and the younger guy hurried past her like she didn’t even exist.
“Look, I can’t thank you enough for taking care of them,” the Sheriff continued, distracting Marion from the no doubt heartfelt reunion going onto her left, judging by the aggressive hugging she could see from the corner of her eye. “If there’s anything we can do to make it up to you, just say the word.”
“Oh no, they were no trouble at all.” Marion waved away the offer, and then immediately wondered why because she honestly couldn’t afford to replace all of the bloodstained furniture by herself. It was too late though, she’d already refused, and even if the Sheriff looked doubtful, she couldn’t take it back now.
“See I know my son, and I know you’re lying,” he said with a grin, but he also didn’t push the issue because something heavy fell from the couch area and tore their attention away.
“I told you to hold it!” the new guy hissed at Derek, who had Stiles half standing in his arms and sagging into him.
“My hands are a little full at the moment, Scott!” he hissed back. “Do you even have a car or did you just decide to walk here?”
“Dude, you realize you guys are in Montana, right? We had no idea until we saw a UFO sighting on the news this morning right before you called, and way to get yourselves—” He abruptly shut up and they both straightened when they realized they had an audience. Stiles just grinned like he was back with the old gang again.
The Sheriff cleared his throat and when Marion looked back, he was raising his eyebrows at them all, and there was a small scramble to get moving.
“Let’s get you to my mom,” Scott said quickly as they hobbled to the door with Stiles sandwiched between him and Derek.
“Nah, Derek fixed me right up. I want to go home.”
Derek rolled his eyes and argued, “No, we’re going to see Melissa, because I’m not a nurse and you took a dart to your side.”
“It was a small one,” Stiles complained, and Derek briefly met Marion’s eye with a long suffering expression that she couldn’t not smile at, even while trying to figure out what a dart meant in this context, because that certainly didn’t look like the darts she’d seen in bars before. “I say we go home—oh, and hit a drive thru on the way! Protein is good for blood loss!”
He was starting to sound a little loopy again. He was probably still a little short on blood and shouldn’t have been up and moving around yet.
“Let’s just get you in the car and we’ll take it from there," the Sheriff suggested, stepping to the side for the trio to shuffle through the narrow doorway. “Ma'am.” He nodded to her briefly, and then followed them out.
Marion just kind of stood there in a haze, watching Derek get Stiles settled in the back seat and then jog around to the other side. He glanced up at the cabin while he opened his door and caught her eye, and nodded with a very small smile that somehow lit up Marion’s soul before climbing in next to Stiles and slamming the door closed behind him.
The SUV reversed down the driveway, trundled around the bend, and then they were gone behind the trees. Actually gone. Officially someone else’s problem.
Marion stepped back inside and shut the door and leaned against it to take a few deep breaths while she reveled in the empty silence of the cabin. She was finally alone again, no stress of emergency or death or guests or possible murderers. She could settle in with her alcohol and ramen, drink as much coffee as she wanted, and get her second draft done.
She made exactly zero moves towards her laptop, unable to force her feet to actually take a step. She just kept standing there, staring at the empty pullout. There were blood stains on the left side even with the original sheets thrown out with the towels, and even years of being a woman hadn’t prepared her to deal with getting that much blood out of a mattress. It was ruined.
Maybe if she just put on a new sheet and folded it away and pretended she hadn’t seen it, she could claim no knowledge of it when Joe inevitably contacted her later. She could replace the misshapen bowls from a supermarket in town, similar if not the same kind, and Joe would no doubt overlook the brand new towels she was about to buy him. He seemed stingy, he wouldn’t say no to new towels.
Alright. She could pull this off. No problem.
…
…
Yeah, she was screwed.
She went straight to the kitchen, pulled out three bottles of straight alcohol, and retreated to the bedroom with her laptop. She was drinking the last twenty-four hours away and would deal with it all in the morning.
Drinking solved everything. Fact.
(Were it not for the very large check that arrived in the mail two weeks after she returned home with her finished draft, signed meticulously by Derek Hale, she might’ve dismissed the whole thing as some kind of drunken hallucination, because she drank a lot that day. And night. And following morning.)