Chapter Text
1
His hands trembled, partially from inebriation and partially from fear, but he held the little garden trowel with a desperate resolve. The rational part of his mind sat quietly laughing at his actions, but he ignored it—much easier to do while drunk.
This was a long shot, an impossible dream, but he was at the end of his rope. In less than a month the tumor in his brain would have him reduced to an empty shell of himself. He couldn’t bear the thought of having to put his wife and kids through that torment. So when he remembered how his grandmother warned him of the danger of crossroads, of what lurked there, waiting to lure souls into an eternity of hellfire, he drank half a bottle of whiskey and put all the necessary items in a little box to bury.
Sharp pieces of gravel sent spikes of pain through his knees as he dug into the ground, breath rising in little puffs in the chilly night air. With each trowel full of dirt, he became more and more convinced he was wasting his time, but his body moved mechanically. He had to try everything, anything, even bargaining with the devil.
When the box was buried, he stood back up, wondering what he was supposed to do now. Go back home feeling like an idiot, most likely.
“Well, well, well. My first customer.”
The man turned quickly and was surprised to see a kid standing a few feet away. Well, not a child, really, but a teenager, probably still in high school. “What—how—?” He had meant to ask him where he’d come from and what he was doing in the middle of nowhere on a school night, but the whiskey got in the way.
“You were expecting horns, cloven hooves, maybe a tail? Come on, that’s fairy-tale stuff. You summoned a crossroads demon, you got one. So what can I do for you tonight?” The kid—demon—put his hands in the pockets of his jacket, not seeming impatient, but perhaps a little bored. Like this was routine.
“I have a tumor in my brain. Can you cure me?”
“Do you just want the brain cancer gone, or all of it?” The demon’s large golden-brown eyes moved down the man’s body, as if he were looking through him. “Cause you got it all over man.”
“Yes, all of it. And I don’t want it back.” He licked his lips, feeling the cold air begin to chap them immediately. “I know what it costs. I’ll pay the price.”
“You get ten years of healthy livin’. After that, it’s eternal damnation. Deal?”
“Y-yeah. So, I’m cured?”
“Almost.” The demon’s large eyes flashed red, and the smile that should have been endearing was almost predatory. He held out his hand.
The man took it, expecting a handshake. Instead, the demon pulled him close, grabbing his shirt collar and kissing him square on the lips.
As kisses went, it wasn’t particularly interesting. No tongues involved, only lasted a second, the sort of kiss he gave his wife when they said goodbye in the morning. But something about it was deeply disturbing; he thought that kissing someone half his age was the problem, but it wasn’t. He felt violated somehow, like something had been taken from him.
It was like his soul could feel what he’d done.
“That’s how we make deals in hell.” The demon took a few steps back. “Remember, ten years. Then the hounds will come for you.”
Laughter filled the winter night, even after the demon was gone.
“So have you decided?”
Stiles jumped, realizing his mouth was slightly agape and closing it quickly. “Uh, what?” He’d been drifting off again, searching the dark corners of his mind for whatever it was that he felt like he was forgetting. Trying to remember was like scrambling for memories of a dream, but it kept nagging at him, so he kept searching.
“On which college you’re going to? Have you picked?” He and Scott were sitting in the cafeteria, waiting for the rest of their group to arrive.
“No. You?” Stiles looked down at food that completely failed to be appetizing to him.
“Maybe. I don’t have as many options as you, though.” There wasn’t any jealousy in his words or on his face, only pride and happiness for his best friend.
“You think I have options? You should see the list of colleges Lydia got into. She got into every single one she applied to, even Harvard.”
“You could’ve gotten in there, too.”
“Yeah, well, applications aren’t free.” Stiles’s father had told him to apply to as many as he wanted, that the money wasn’t a problem, but he couldn’t bring himself to waste hundreds of dollars on applications that might come back with a big fat “no” anyway, and it wasn’t like he could go to more than one college. So he’d picked five schools, just to be safe. He’d gotten into all of them.
In a few months they’d all be graduating, heading off to school in any number of distant locations. But the werewolves would always have a reason to stay in touch, to come back here, because Derek was here.
Lydia he’d probably never see again, until she was on TV for winning some international award for curing cancer.
“This sucks,” Scott said, reading Stiles’s mind perfectly. “I mean, high school sucks, but so does growing up.”
“Come on,” Stiles smiled, forcing himself to be cheerful for his friend’s sake. “It won’t be that bad. We might end up at the same college, and even if we don’t, it’s not like we’ll stop being friends. You won’t be rid of me so easily.”
“Can you imagine when we’re all older, married with kids and white picket fences. We’ll only see the pack on birthdays and holidays.”
“I can totally see Derek in a Santa hat, handing out presents.”
They both broke into loud laughter at the image. They didn’t stop until Jackson punched Stiles in the shoulder and demanded they calm down before they ruined his appetite.
For the rest of the day, Stiles filled the quiet lulls in lectures and conversations with the same fruitless attempt to remember what he’d forgotten.
“We need to talk.”
Scott’s smile faded into an uncertain frown. “Okay,” his voice was hesitant. He probably thought he’d done something wrong and his alpha was about to lecture him.
Derek remained silent as they walked away from the Hale house. He didn’t speak until they were far enough out of the earshot of even the nosiest werewolf.
“Heh, you didn’t bring me out here to execute me, right?”
Rolling his eyes, Derek wondered when people were going to stop being so afraid of him. He’d known Scott for more than two years now, you’d think he’d lighten up. “No. This is about Stiles.”
“What about him?” The smell of fear momentarily overwhelmed Derek’s senses.
“Something’s wrong with him. I was hoping you could tell me what.” There was a time when Derek Hale could ask a favor without making it sound like a command, but those days were long gone. Occasionally the alpha would worry that perhaps his approach to leadership was too harsh, but then one of the idiot teens he’d given the bite to would go off and commit some act of unbelievable stupidity, and he’d remember why he took a hard line with them.
Eventually they’d be mature, and he could stop treating them like misbehaving children, but that day was not today.
“I don’t know.” The truth. Maybe Scott was growing up, after all. “He won’t tell me, but he’s been distant and more unfocused than usual. At first I thought maybe it was college and graduating, but now I’m not so sure.” The teen hesitated. “And sometimes I smell—I smell sulfur on him.” Scott sounded as confused as Derek felt, but he kept his face blank.
“I went to his house; the smell is all over his room.” Running a hand through his hair, he sighed. “If he won’t talk to you, I’ll have to make him talk to me.”
“Yeah, that’s the best plan, just beat the truth out of him.” Scott rolled his eyes. “You can’t make him tell you what’s up. I think a kinder approach—”
“I think whatever’s going on could have implications to this pack, and I think it’s my job to keep that from happening.” Stepping closer to Scott, he let his eyes glow red for a moment. “I also think you should let me try to talk to him. I never said I’d beat it out of him.”
“Okay, okay,” Scott raised his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Just be nice, you know he’s terrified of you, so go easy.” Derek opened his mouth to reply, but the younger werewolf cut him off. “No, I’m serious. You’re harder on him than the rest of us, which is the opposite of logical because he’s human. I mean, you don’t throw him around and try to train him or anything, but…” His voice faded as he tried to form his thoughts into words. “You’re just meaner to him. I don’t know if it’s because he’s not a super special werewolf like us or what.”
Derek was left standing in the darkening woods long after Scott left, and though his body was perfectly motionless, his mind was not idle.
“Jesus!” Stiles exclaimed, then promptly tipped his desk chair backwards and fell out of it, landing in an awkward heap on the floor of his room.
“I didn’t mean to scare you. Sorry.” The apology from Derek seemed more than forced. Stiles looked behind the alpha, wondering if someone was holding a gun to his head or something. “Uh, can I come in?” He was currently balanced on Stiles’s window sill, making it look like the easiest thing in the world, the bastard.
“Yeah, fine, but you know, normal people call or text before climbing into my bedroom.” That was only half a lie, but Scott was his best friend and could drop by any time he liked.
For a moment it looked like Derek was about to bite his head off, but then he just inhaled slowly. “I’ll try to be more respectful of your boundaries. But I needed to talk about what’s been going on with you.”
Stiles knew his mouth was hanging open in shock, but he couldn’t get his brain past the first part of what Derek had said. Respect his boundaries? Since when did Derek respect anyone’s anything? Had he been watching marathons of Dr. Phil or something?
“Stiles. Are you going to talk to me, or just stare?”
“Uh. What—what was the question?” He cleared his throat and righted his desk chair. “Sorry I just think I might have had a stroke because I’d swear you were talking about respecting boundaries like a reasonable person—”
“Stiles.” Derek spat the name like a threat, like a curse. His knuckles were white from clenching his fists so tightly, probably to keep them from involuntarily finding their way around Stiles’s neck. “What’s wrong with you? I need to know.”
“Nothing’s wrong.” His voice didn’t squeak, nope. His throat was just a little dry. “Things are great for once. No crazy werewolf shit going down, no hunters trying to kill all my friends. Haven’t even seen a monster lately, other than present company.” He stepped behind his chair, using it as a shield. “Just kidding!”
With one fluid motion, Derek pushed the chair aside and stepped closer to Stiles, keeping the teen from fleeing by holding the collar of his t-shirt.
“D-dude, I thought we were respecting boundaries now!” His heart was going wild in his chest, and he had the sudden irrelevant thought that this must be what deer feel like when they’re running from predators.
But Derek was only sniffing him, which was weird and disturbing, but not necessarily life-threatening. Rolling his eyes and pushing Stiles away, he barked, “You reek of sulfur. This whole place does. What are you into? And don’t tell me it’s something for chemistry class.”
“Sulfur?” Stiles sniffed his t-shirt. It smelled like his body-wash and deodorant and a little like his own skin.
“It’s too faint for you to pick up on it.” He turned and touched a hand to the window sill. Holding it up for Stiles to see the yellow powder, Derek continued. “So where’d it come from?”
“I don’t know.” He let some of his fear leak into his words, thinking of the hours that had gone missing from his memory, of the strange dreams and the feeling he was forgetting something important. “I don’t, okay?”
Derek looking at him with an unreadable expression, but it was different from his usual one, which tended to generally be angry. This was like the alpha was seeing Stiles for the first time.
Not knowing what else to do, Stiles reverted to his default—he just kept talking. “There’s nights when I can’t remember what I’ve been doing for the past several hours and sometimes I wake up feeling like I didn’t sleep at all and I don’t know what’s happening it’s not like I’m on drugs or something just one minute I’m working on homework and then I’m in my bed and my alarm is going off.” He paused to breathe. “I’m scared, okay? So just back off, and—and stop looking at me like you’re about to eviscerate me. Please.”
With what looked to Stiles like an amazing force of will, Derek softened his expression back to impassive. That was something, at least.
“So tell me, mister alpha, what the hell is happening?” He didn’t mean to sound like he was begging, but once the words were out, he couldn’t change them. Maybe Derek would respond to desperation and actually give him a straight answer for once.
Maybe pigs would fly.
“I don’t know,” Derek said after a long moment that had been filled only with an unbroken stare between the two men. “I’ve never heard of anything like this.”
Stiles began to laugh, high-pitched and awkwardly. “You—you’re telling me that you have no fucking idea what’s going on? Maybe it’s just run-of-the-mill insanity?”
“No. The sulfur is here, it’s real. I’ll read through the bestiary and get back to you.”
And just like that, Mr. Sourwolf Grumpypants was out into the night.
“Thanks for nothing, asshole,” Stiles muttered as he shut the window behind Derek. He hoped there werewolf heard him, too.
“So, I had a brilliant idea.” Stiles was all cheerfulness and optimism that morning. Derek hadn’t found anything useful in the bestiary, but the teen hadn’t just been sitting around waiting for someone else to solve his problems.
“Yeah?” He’d told Scott what was going on, and his best friend had understood why he’d kept it from everyone for so long. Scott might think with his dick too often for his well-being, but he was a good friend, a good person. He realized how terrifying it had been for Stiles to be losing his grip on reality.
“I’m putting cameras up in my room.” Alright, so he’d kinda stolen the idea from Jackson, from back when he was a scaly monster instead of the usual werewolf he was now, but who was keeping score? “That way if I lose time again, I’ll see what happened. And,” he continued, before Scott could interrupt, “I’m uploading the feed to the cloud, so no one can come by and tamper with it. I got it all set up with Danny.”
“Just remember to turn them off if you’re gonna—”
“Come on, already thought of that. I’m not really into exhibitionism.”
“Now if only we can train you to stop running your mouth,” Jackson quipped, walking in step with the other two seniors as they made their way to class.
“Haha, you’re just comedy gold. You should consider a career in stand-up.” This back-and-forth between them was almost routine; Jackson still wouldn’t admit that the pack—including Stiles, for all his humanity, and Lydia, too—were his friends, all of them, so he said mean things, but he was just keeping up aloof appearances.
“Guess who’s going to Stanford in the fall?” Jackson bragged, shrugging off Stiles’s insult like a champ.
“You got in, that’s great!” Scott wasn’t even being sarcastic. Despite the other werewolf’s resistance to pack unity and friendship, Scott no longer rose to his bait for petty fights. “Lydia might go there, too. She’s about to have a breakdown trying to decide which school to pick.”
Stiles didn’t mention that he’d gotten in there, too, and the thought of having to share a campus with Jackson made him want to pick another college to attend. But it wasn’t like high school—he could go days without seeing the guy if he wanted. Or weeks. Or the rest of his life.
Glancing at Jackson, he reconsidered. There was no way that man was going to last four years without some sort of crisis, and Stiles would have to swoop in and save the day.
Now if only he could solve his own crisis.
A week passed before Stiles worked up the courage to ask Danny to see the footage. He’d missed time two days that week, and he was almost afraid to see what had happened. What if he was turning into some monster? What if he’d been killing people?
His dad hadn’t investigated any weird deaths or disappearances, so that wasn’t likely. But he was doing something in the hours he couldn’t remember, and it probably wasn’t volunteering at the local soup kitchen or helping old ladies across the street.
“Well?” Stiles asked, “Did you see the time spans I mentioned?”
Danny was giving him a weird look, one that clearly said no one was about to get any good news. “Two things are weird about them. The first, well, just watch.” Danny swung the monitor around so that Stiles could see.
They watched quietly as the little image of Stiles slept, sheets haphazard, arms flung out at odd angles, mouth open. He’d never seen himself asleep before, of course, but somehow it didn’t surprise him.
Just when he was about to impatiently ask what they were waiting for when it happened—the camera flickered out, filling with interference and static.
“What the hell was that? Network trouble?”
“No. The only thing that could cause this is major electromagnetic interference, and you don’t live near any power lines. So unless your dad was playing around with electromagnets, I don’t have a clue. It gets weirder.”
The picture flickered back to normal, and then Stiles sat up. something about the movement made a chill run up his spine; it wasn’t just that he didn’t remember doing this, the way his body moved was wrong. Stiles might not have been the most elegant or graceful of teens, but he knew himself well enough to recognize that whoever was running the show in his body wasn’t him.
“I look possessed,” he breathed. “I mean—that doesn’t look like me, right?”
“It’s not over,” Danny whispered back. The image of Stiles got out of bed and walked across the room, stopping to turn and wink at the camera.
“That thing knew about the hidden camera. What the hell is happening to me?”
“I have no fucking idea.”
“I’m calling Scott. Do you mind if I invite the pack over here?” Danny had known about the werewolf thing for ages, ever since Jackson had dealt with his little bag of personal problems that involved shape-shifting into a snake-monster.
“Yeah, sure, but tell them to come through the window. It’s a school night.”
“Thanks.” He needed more than just advice or knowledge that the pack could give him. He needed their help. If he was going to randomly lose control of his body there wasn’t much he himself could do to stop it.
Finding Scott’s name in his contacts was harder than it should have been; Stiles’s hands were trembling. Before he could hit the call button, he dropped his phone, and fumbling for it only sent it bouncing across the room.
“Goddammit!” Stiles rubbed his face, then sat down on Danny’s bed, cradling his head in his hands. “Fuck. Just. Fuck!”
On the other side of the room, Danny was quietly texting, probably telling Scott and the rest of the pack to get their asses over here to calm down their token human.
“Oh, I’m a fucking mess,” Stiles groaned.
“Dude, I think you can cut yourself some slack. You weren’t just sleepwalking in that video. Scott and Derek will be here soon."
“You told Derek?” He didn’t want the alpha to see him like this—a nervous wreck. Being seen so vulnerable by him made Stiles think of Discovery channel shows of lions chasing down sick gazelles. Derek acted more wolf than human most of the time. He’d probably kick Stiles out of the Werewolf Club of Cool Kids if he found out Stiles was being possessed by something.
He’d faced down monsters and hunters and all kinds of bad shit, but something about it happening to him converted his normally quick-thinking, rational brain into a puddle of uselessness. I have no control over this one, no idea where to even start researching. There’s nothing I can do and it’s driving me crazy, maybe I should just calm down and let the pack handle this. I mean they aren’t idiots, they can deal. Oh god what if they have to put me down like a rabid dog oh shit they’re gonna kill me I’ve been compromised shitfuck maybe I should just get the hell out of here—
“If you’re about to rabbit, Stiles, you better just sit back down.” Danny leaned back in his desk chair, crossing his arms. “I’m not explaining to Derek Hale why I let you leave.”
He hadn’t even realized he’d stood up. “I just uh. Had to pee?”
“You can hold it.”
Stiles slowly sank back onto the bed, but he couldn’t keep his restless limbs from fidgeting. Scott wouldn’t let Derek kill him, Stiles reasoned. They were best friends, and friends don’t let friends get murdered by werewolves.
Unfortunately, Derek arrived first. As he lithely climbed through the window, Danny stood up, saying, “I’m gonna go—somewhere else. Less I know about this the better.”
“Gee, thanks, man,” Stiles hissed as he was abandoned alone in a room with an angry alpha.
“You saw what happened?” His voice wasn’t as harsh as Stiles was expecting, which made him doubly suspicious. How do you keep a frightened animal from spooking? Use a quiet voice.
“Sort of. See for yourself.”
The room was eerily silent as Derek watched. When it was over, he turned to the teen, face obnoxiously blank. “I think I have an idea of what’s going on here. It’s bad news.”
“Jesus, don’t sugar coat it or anything,” Stiles rolled his eyes. “Out with it, though. No mysterious sourwolf tactics.”
“It looks like a demon.”
“A what? A demon?” He was laughing, and it sounded suspiciously like the sound of something cracking and shattering to pieces inside his skull.
“They exist. It’s rare to see a possession like this, though. Normally they take and they don’t give the body back. Ever. That’s what had me confused before. I should’ve known, the sulfur. But it’s been a long time since I’ve even thought about demons. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry, as in, about not figuring it out sooner? Or you’re sorry you’re going to have to kill me?”
“The former, fuck. I’m not going to kill you. Ever. What do you think I am?” The strange thing was, at that moment, Derek seemed sincere, and more emotional than he’d ever been in front of Stiles.
A long, heavy moment crawled by before he answered. “I think you’re someone who does what he thinks needs doing. You protect yourself and your pack no matter what.”
“Slaughtering high school kids for no reason isn’t part of that. I’m a werewolf, not a monster. There’s a simple fix for this, the demon problem.”
“Really?” Stiles felt freer, lighter than he had in a month, since the first morning he’d woken up without remembering the past 14 hours.
“Yeah, just pour pure salt in front of all your windows and doorways so it can’t get into your house. But the demon is going to bring something a hell of a lot worse down on us than just one kid sleep-walking. No offence.”
“I am actually very personally offended by that, you’re trivializing my pain, do you even know what it’s like to not know what the fuck you’ve been doing half the time?”
“Stiles, shut up. There’ll be hunters coming.”
“So? The Argents—”
“The Argents are small fries compared to the type demons attract.”
“Oh. I’m—”
“Don’t apologize. You didn’t summon the demon, it just found you.”
Stiles shut his mouth, wondering how Derek could have known what he was about to say.
“The pack will be fine if we lay low until the demon is long gone.”
Such a simple plan, Stiles thought. And oh, how it went so terribly wrong.