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Stiles knows. He just knows. He's in the coffee shop that makes the really awesome muffins with ridiculous names and he feels it. They come through the door together – two men, two women – and every single one of them gives off the kind of raw power Derek does when he's amped up and pronouncing 'I'm the Alpha' like it's the answer to every question.
It scares the shit out of him in a way Derek never has. He wants to run but he knows that's the absolute worst thing he could do. He can feel them watching him as he waits at the counter – sees the way they do it without actually looking at him. Except for one of the twins – she looks at him and never seems to blink.
He takes one long look at them, cataloguing what features he can, then goes back to making small talk with the cute barista, Lily. She always indulges him, which is nice, even though she probably just thinks he's dorky and weird. They can probably smell Derek on him, Scott always can even when Stiles hasn't seen Derek for weeks. Will they come after him just because he smells like Derek? Shit. This is the sort of thing Derek should tell him about.
And like that, he knows. This is what Derek's been trying to hide from him. Why Derek tries to put him off when he asks about anything other than completely banal (thank you Word of the Day!) things. Why would Derek hide this from him, though, other werewolves being in town. Is it because Scott shot him down in flames that night? But it can't be – Derek's been so good, lately, at not being that guy, at least not with Stiles.
“Friends of yours?” Lily asks while she waits for him to choose which muffins he wants. He raises an eyebrow at her and she nods over his shoulder towards the Alphas.
(And, seriously? How the hell can four Alphas stand being around each other? Derek and Scott barely handle each other and Scott isn't even a real Alpha.)
“Nah,” Stiles says, shrugging and flaring an arm out. “They probably just recognise the Sheriff's kid.”
Lily smiles at him – he loves the way her lips twitch up slowly – and he smiles back. He gives himself a mental pat on the back for that one, knowing the Alphas will have heard. Subtlety thy name is Stiles. Of course, that doesn't mean they're guaranteed to leave him alone. God he wishes Derek was better at communication – how to deal with rival packs would be a super thing to know right now.
Not that Stiles is pack. Well. Technically he's in Scott's ragtag pack, he guesses, which is pretty much just him and Scott now. Sometimes Lydia. Jackson when he's not being an entitled douche – because apparently Jackson has more issues with Derek than with Scott. Not Allison, for so many reasons, but Stiles still sees her at least once a week – when they meet up for coffee and resolutely don't talk about their dead mothers.
Stiles spends a lot of his time with Allison hoping that she didn't know about her grandfather kidnapping him. Because he finds himself really liking her, now that he gets to speak to her without Scott mooning (hah!) over her next to him, and he'd kinda like to keep feeling that way.
Lily clears her throat and he blinks at her, reflexively smiling as his cheeks flush.
“Sorry, got lost,” he says, waving one hand. “Give me any four off the top row, two off the bottom.”
“Your usual then,” Lily laughs. It's a nice laugh, one that makes Stiles feel warm inside. She's a senior and sometimes Stiles can't believe the way she speaks to him. She even waves sometimes when they pass at school, which is pretty much unheard of for Stiles.
It's not that – Stiles isn't really that self-loathing, he knows he does actually have some charms. Erica told him she used to have a crush on him, after all. It's just that they're not enough to pull in the people he really, really wants. Like Lydia, obviously, or Danny – after Stiles began to realise that dudes did it for him too. Maybe it's easier to sort-of-maybe flirt with Lily because there's not some part of him convinced that if he just does it in the right way he'll win her over.
Lily hands over the bag of muffins as Michael, the other barista, slides his coffee onto the counter. Stiles opens the bag for a quick sniff and can tell that she picked his favourites (the two from the bottom shelf are for him and the four from the top are the healthy ones for his Dad). Stiles grins at her and the smile he gets back is a little shy. Huh. Maybe, he thinks. Maybe she's not just indulging me.
(He'd been lying to Scott – about still trying to win Lydia over. It was easy, a mask he could slip back on without anyone even noticing what it was. Well, Derek might have noticed – he was scary intuitive when he wanted to be – but Stiles didn't mind Derek knowing.)
Lily rings him up and he tips generously, winning another small smile from her. He picks up his coffee and takes an appreciative sip before raising the cup towards Michael in a little salute. Stiles leaves then, ignoring the eyes that heavy on him as he walks out. There's a prickle of fear across his skin as he passes the Alphas and he hopes that they can't smell it on him.
He's halfway to his Jeep when he feels her presence behind him. He hadn't even heard the door of the shop open and close but here's the thing – his local Alpha is Derek Hale and after months of Derek's Creeping-with-a-capital-C Stiles has developed a sense for lurking werewolves.
“You know you'll have to do better than that if you want to scare me,” Stiles says over his shoulder. He actually hears her stop and turns his head enough to see it's the twin that was staring at him.
He deliberately turns his back again, ignoring the tingling 'predator behind me!' signals his body is sending him, and completes the journey to his Jeep with only the white knuckled grip on his bag of muffins to show his feelings. He hopes. What does he smell like right now? Ugh, Derek has so much explaining to do when Stiles sees him next.
She makes her move when he reaches the Jeep, waiting for him to sling the muffins onto the passenger seat before pushing him against the side. He manages to save his coffee from falling but only just. He frowns at her hands where they're pressing against his shoulders.
“Dude, this is not polite behaviour,” he says, meeting her eyes. They're grey and sharp and she's staring at Stiles like she's never seen anything like him before. It's a look Derek's favoured him with more than once in the past.
Stiles shifts against her grip but there's no give. He thinks longingly of the baseball bat he has stashed down the side of his seat because he's starting to think he's in real trouble now. She leans forwards and sniffs him, right up in his space and, no, that's not right, only a few people are allowed to do that.
“You did hear me back there, right?” he asks, trying to sound more casual than he feels when she leans to the other side and sniffs at his neck. It's where Derek had buried his face when he had a panic attack a couple of weeks ago.
“My Dad is the Sheriff,” Stiles continues conversationally. It's hard because he just wants to shout at her to fuck off. “He has eyes everywhere. I don't think he'd like knowing some grown-ass stranger was sniffing all over his son.”
“You stink of werewolf,” the woman says. She backs away a little but leaves her hands curled around his shoulders. Stiles shifts.
“Hard not to when half your friends have a furry little problem,” he's been looking for an excuse to use that line, had been wondering if Derek would get it. The female Alpha doesn't approve.
“You're part of the Alpha's pack?” she asks and Stiles bristles for no reason he wants to think about.
“I think that's a bit personal,” Stiles says, pulling a face. “Can't you sniff it out?”
“You told me to stop sniffing you,” she points out and Stiles can't help the surprised laugh.
“Guess I'm not really used to werewolves doing what I ask them to do,” he says. His coffee is cooling in his cup and that's really starting to annoy him so that's what he blames for his next sentence being: “He's got my back.”
He means it though, he realises, has meant it for a longer than he knew. Derek's proven himself more than once and he hasn't even threatened Stiles for ages. Huh. Maybe Stiles needs to re-evaluate their relationship, they might even be friends now.
“So I'm pretty sure he wouldn't appreciate you putting your hands all over me like this,” Stiles says, letting his mouth run away without conscious thought. “That's kinda his thing. We have a thing.”
Red alert! Red alert! Shit, Stiles just made it sound like - shit. Derek's not going to like that. Probably. Stiles isn't really sure where Derek's tastes run but he's fairly certain he's not on a list of people that Derek would want to have a 'thing' with. Shit. This is why he's not supposed to speak to strangers.
The female Alpha gives him a sceptical look, which is incredibly unfair and also serves a double purpose of reminding Stiles of the way his Dad had looked at him when he half-came out to him at Jungle. Thinking about his Dad gets him back on track.
“Whatever,” Stiles says, his heart is beating a bit harder in his chest than he wants it to and he takes a deep breath. “The important thing is that you're molesting the Sheriff's son. In public. On a Saturday afternoon.”
The female Alpha finally steps back and Stiles straightens his shirt from where it had bunched up under her grip. He takes a sip of his coffee, which is heading straight toward lukewarm, and makes a face at her for being to blame. Her face is a mess of expressions, which just proves to Stiles that Derek is an exception on the whole 'constant blank mask' front. Actually, now that he thinks about it, Peter had plenty of expressions too – Stiles just doesn't like thinking about them because at least half of them had made him feel like Peter wanted to do things to him.
“So there wasn't even a point to that, was there?” Stiles says as he moves away from the side of the Jeep. His legs are only slightly unsteady, yay for fighting his own fear responses! “Or were you just trying to intimidate the human pack member?”
“You're a very strange human,” she says, giving him a slow once-over that makes his cheeks heat. “Why aren't you afraid of me?”
“Lady,” Stiles says, letting out a dark laugh, slipping his mask off for a moment. “If you knew even half of the shit I've gone through in the past few months you wouldn't have to ask that.”
She looks taken aback by his words, by the shift in his posture. She's shorter than him and he uses that advantage, leaning into her space and looking down at her. Belatedly he thinks it's probably the stupidest thing he's done, because staring down an Alpha werewolf is probably just as much of a challenge as staring down an Alpha wolf. She surprises him by taking another step back. Stiles desperately tries not to show his surprise.
He slides into the Jeep but pauses before he pulls the door shut, looking up at her again. She's watching his every move as if cataloguing it for later study. It reminds him a little of Lydia and the way she focuses in Chemistry.
“You guys have Boyd and Erica, don't you?” he asks, his brain offering the conclusion up without showing him any of the working out. The Alpha actually startles. Then her mouth curls, a hint of fang pressing at her bottom lip.
“They came to us,” she says, and Derek hadn't said anything about them leaving. “We're educating them.”
That sounds bad. That sounds very, very bad. If their loyalty to Derek wasn't enough to keep them with him while Allison was on her crusade – it's entirely possible that all of these Alphas know that Derek's fucked up pretty badly since becoming Alpha. That can't be a good thing for him. Would they kill him for the Jackson mess? Or blame him for whatever Gerard's turning into out there?
Stiles really needs to see Derek, and not just to shout at him.
“Well,” Stiles says, lost for a moment. “Tell Erica that – tell her Batman's nothing without a Catwoman to play off of.”
He slams his door shut and starts the Jeep before the female Alpha can answer him. Anything she tries to say is lost under the rattling roar of the engine as he pulls out and drives the hell away. He's going to take the muffins to the Station, as is tradition, and then he's going to find Derek and make him talk.
–
“So I had an interesting encounter today,” Stiles says, slamming his way into the Hale house. It's the third place he's checked, after the Werewolf House of Trains and the apartment he's pretty sure nobody else knows Derek has, and Derek has to be here because the Camaro is parked up outside.
Derek doesn't appear so Stiles waits in the entrance, looking up at the stairs. He's heard from Scott that Derek loves making a dramatic entrance by leaping down the things – because apparently Derek doesn't know how to use stairs? Stiles is pretty sure he's never seen him use them if he can just simply jump down. How is this someone he's friends with?
Not the point.
“It would've been really helpful to me if you could've warned me about the pack of Alphas we apparently have,” Stiles continues. He doesn't bother raising his voice because he knows that wherever Derek is he can hear Stiles. “And about how they'd creep on me in my favourite coffeeshop and then accost me because I smell like werewolves.”
Derek chooses that moment to appear, coming out of the wide door on Stiles' left and for a moment Stiles is genuinely disappointed he didn't get to see any stair leaping. Then he remembers he's supposed to be angry.
“Seriously,” Stiles says when Derek says nothing, just stares at him. “You've got nothing to say about that?”
Derek's face does something complicated, like he's possibly having an emotion he can't control, and then switches to blank. He takes half a step forward and then stops as if uncertain and, okay, that's never not going to be strange. It's been nearly two months and Stiles still doesn't know how to deal with this Derek, a Derek he's beginning to realise only he sees.
“Were you going to tell me eventually, at least?” Stiles asks, the anger seeping out of him. It's replaced by something else, a brief quiver of fear because, holy shit, he stared down a strange Alpha.
“I knew you'd go looking if I told you,” Derek says, folding his arms across his chest. “I wanted to put that off as long as I could.”
“Because you didn't want the puny human getting himself in trouble?” Stiles asks, but there's no heat in it because that's pretty much exactly what he just did. He feels a shiver go down his back.
“Because you have a habit of pushing things too hard,” Derek says and Stiles winces. “And that causes trouble for everyone else.”
“Okay,” Stiles says, raising his hands. “That's a fair point. But I want to point out that at least half of the times I've been in trouble lately have not been my fault. Trouble seems to chase me.”
Derek snorts and that's close enough to a laugh to make Stiles stare at him. One day, maybe. Derek frowns a moment later though, sniffing the air, and then he's right in Stiles' personal space. Ah. Their thing, Stiles thinks a bit hysterically. He's on firm ground with this.
“She touched you,” Derek says, keeping his hands down by his sides. Stiles feels a tremor go through his body again. He's got a really bad feeling about where his body is going with this. He takes a breath.
“She did your old trick,” Stiles shrugs, licking his lips. “Pushed me up against the side of the Jeep. Sniffed me.”
“She shouldn't have done that,” Derek says and his hands lift as if he wants to touch Stiles. Stiles ignores the way he actually kind of wants him to, right now, because he's not sure how much longer he's going to be standing.
“Right?” Stiles says, and there's the tell-tale quiver in his voice. “I told her it was a bad idea to grope the Sheriff's son in public. I may have also accidentally implied we have some kind of thing thing going on – but it's okay, she pretty obviously didn't believe me so your reputation is still safe.”
Derek's eyes widen briefly in surprise and something else Stiles misses because his chest is tightening. He struggles to take a couple of deep breaths because, no, he refuses to do this. He's safe now, Derek's not going to let anything happen to him, and holy shit he really did stare down an Alpha.
“Stiles,” Derek lifts a hesitant hand and lays his palm over Stiles' heart. “Your heartbeat -”
“Just fighting off a coup,” Stiles says, taking another concentrated breath. “My body has decided to panic because I thought it was a really good idea to stare down a strange Alpha. Derek. Why the hell would I do that?”
Derek looks – proud, actually, and amazed like he can't believe Stiles is still alive. Stiles is with him on that because he really doesn't believe it either, hence the panic starting to make itself known. Derek rubs small circles against Stiles' chest with his hand then stretches out his other arm to draw Stiles in, squeezing the back of Stiles' neck. Stiles wraps his arms around him because Stiles is always up for hugs no matter who's giving them.
Derek makes soft noises as Stiles runs down the list of methods he uses to fight off his attacks. He's a bit rusty. Or, well, he was a bit rusty until right around the time he got paralysed twice. He's had a lot of practice lately. He thinks he's got this one, though, as he presses his ear against Derek's chest to measure the regularity of his heartbeat. It's reassuring, just like the small circles Derek's still making with his hand, and Stiles feels the panic leeching back out of him. He holds on for longer than he needs to because, frankly, he really needs it.
“Do you want to sit down?” Derek asks when Stiles finally pulls back. His hands fall away and Stiles misses them a bit – he's getting used to the casual pack touching, apparently, which is hilarious considering he's barely a part of two packs.
“Do you even have furniture here?” Stiles asks, raising his eyebrows. Derek punches him lightly on the arm and walks back through the door he came through. Stiles follows him through the room, which looks like it's been the scene of more than one werewolf smackdown, and into another. The second room has a couple of folding chairs, which Stiles guesses is better than nothing.
Derek doesn't sit, though, grabbing the chairs in one hand and leading Stiles out the back of the house. He's never really been beyond the front of the house so he's surprised by the small, well tended garden he sees. Derek registers his surprise without even looking at him and shoots a half-smile over his shoulder.
“Did you think I spent all of my time brooding?” Derek asks, setting the chairs up on a patch of grass.
“I did think brooding on your level was something you spent a long time perfecting,” Stiles says, wandering around the garden. Derek sits and Stiles can feel his eyes watching as he walks.
“I aced Brooding 101 in college,” Derek says and that? That was definitely a joke. Stiles stops and stares back at Derek. Apparently Stiles' surprise is funny because that snort of laughter is back.
“I don't need the practice,” Derek adds, shrugging one shoulder. “But this – this was my mother's garden. Trying to fix it gave me something to do – when I needed to stop thinking.”
Stiles knows all about that sort of distraction technique. His Dad always knew when Stiles was having a particularly hard time with his ADHD, or when he was grieving over his Mom, because the house would end up cleaned from top to bottom. He thinks bringing control to something wild, like an overgrown garden, is more fitting than any hobby he would've thought up for Derek.
“Does Isaac know about the Alpha pack?” Stiles asks, bending to smell a rose that's just starting to unfurl. Derek makes the 'I hate it when you're insightful' noise that Stiles is starting to get used to.
“I asked him not to tell you or Scott,” Derek says and Stiles looks across to see Derek's eyes flick away from him, that weird little something flashing in them briefly again. Derek closes his eyes. “They're not doing anything yet and you – you should all get to have -”
“A summer vacation?” Stiles asks, straightening. Derek's eyes open and he nods at Stiles. “Trying to be a better Alpha?”
“I knew they were coming,” Derek says as Stiles finally sits down next to him. “Too much has happened here – there's been too much attention.”
“So that's why you turned four people you probably shouldn't have,” Stiles observes, shifting the chair until he can look at Derek without turning his head. “And so close together.”
“I needed the strength,” Derek nods. “I didn't know what they would do when they got here.”
“What have they been doing?” Stiles asks. “I mean – I know they have Erica and Boyd -” at Derek's sharp look he rolls his eyes and adds: “Yeah, I figured that out. She says they're 'educating' them. That sounds bad.”
“It could be,” Derek says slowly. “I just – I wish they'd do something. I'm tired of waiting. They just seem to be everywhere, watching me.”
“Karma,” Stiles says. Derek raises an eyebrow at him, his eyes widening slightly. Stiles knows that look. “Oh, come on. What do you expect when you spend six months creeping on teenagers. The universe has to balance.”
“You're not funny,” Derek says, sighing and settling into the chair.
“Lies, I'm very funny,” Stiles says, waving a hand. “Have you tried confronting them?”
“Stiles,” Derek says, frowning up at the sky. “I have two Betas – one I don't trust and one who spends most of his time with someone else. Jackson's one wrong decision away from becoming an Omega. Scott refuses to deal with me. Two other Betas left me. My pack is pretty much non-existent.”
“Hey,” Stiles nudges one of Derek's legs with a foot until Derek looks at him. “You've got me. I make a pretty good auxiliary unit.”
Derek snorts again and this time Stiles kicks at him. Derek catches his foot and tugs until he can drop it on his lap. Fine. Stiles crosses his other leg at the ankle over the one Derek's commandeered and folds his hands behind his head.
“I really did stare down that Alpha,” he says, watching cotton clouds drift through the sky. Derek places a hand on his ankle and squeezes.
“I believe you,” he says. It's quiet and it makes Stiles feel warm inside.
“We'll figure this out,” Stiles adds, letting his eyes fall shut. Here comes the crash. Derek's hand is still on his ankle and it's reassuring, like an anchor keeping him steady. “That's why you need me, after all.”
“Yeah,” Derek says, even quieter than before. Stiles isn't sure of the tone of next sentence because he's on the edge of sleep when he hears it – but it sounds wistful. “That's why I need you.”