Chapter Text
Stiles loved animals.
He loved them just as much as the next person did, though probably slightly less than Scott. Just slightly.
And listen, he was average sized. He was 5’7”, which was average, and his body was toned but not bulky, so again, average, no matter how Derek always seemed to tower over him at 6’ with that ripped build.
Stiles still didn’t understand how Derek got those muscles and drool-worthy washboard six pack at nineteen.
Werewolf genetics with a side of vengeance, he concluded.
But Stiles was average all the way around, so if his spell chanting practice on making a broom sweep the floor had to go wrong and he had to turn into an animal, why couldn’t he be a labrador? A golden retriever? A cat? Hell, he’d even take a chihuahua over— over a fucking hamster.
He stared at himself in his mirror—thank god he owned a floor length one—for a good long while. Creamy light orange fur swirled with white, little black dots here and there, and tiny pink paws. His sight seemed to have deteriorated a bit, but his sense of smell and hearing on the other hand….
Let’s just say he could smell and hear more than he wanted to, though he supposed it more than made up for his somewhat poor eyesight.
But why, oh why, of all things a hamster?
He supposed he should count his lucky stars that he didn’t turn into a mouse or a rat, but it didn’t even matter either way because when his dad caught a glimpse of him along the wall, he immediately got the same broom Stiles had been attempting to magic and tried to smack Stiles out of the house with it.
Hamsters could apparently run very fast, Stiles quickly found out.
He ran all the way to the clinic since Scott’s schedule had changed now that summer had started—surely Scott would recognize him and help, he’d thought, except Scott did not realize jack shit.
“Hey, little guy, where’d you come from?” crooned Scott as he picked Stiles up and showed him to Deaton. “Did someone bring in their pet hamster? Wild hamsters don’t live here, do they?”
Stiles squeaked his head off trying to say that it was him, it was him, Stiles, number one best friend, but they just smiled down at him like he was a moron.
Which he was for even getting himself into this mess.
Deaton shook his head. “No, not in the United States that I know of.” He peered at Stiles and furrowed his brows in thought. “Hmm, he looks well-fed and docile. Maybe he escaped from one of our clients? I’ll phone them. For now, I believe I have an empty hamster cage in the back of that room over th—”
Stiles bit Scott’s finger to be dropped onto the table where his target lay—Scott’s phone. Thus, while Scott went to go get the cage, Stiles unlocked Scott’s phone with his little paws—Allison’s birthday, of course—and managed to type out a text.
‘It’s me, Stiles! I’m stuck as a hamster! Help!’
When Scott came back, though, he simply looked down at his unlocked phone and read aloud “‘It’s…Stiles?’ What’s with these weird symbols?” He glanced at Stiles with a fond huff. “Stiles would like you. You kind of remind me of him….” He sighed again. “He’s out-of-country for some study abroad thing, though. Feels so weird to not be able to reach him…. But we’ll find your owner soon, little guy, don’t you worry!”
It was then that Stiles realized with a dreadful sinking feeling that the side effects of this spell weren’t as simple as they seemed.
He’d be stuck like this for who knew how long, and no one would even know he was missing. As far as they were concerned, he was off studying abroad, probably forever if he stayed a fucking hamster.
Stiles wanted to rip his hair out. Or his fur.
But he would prevail—people didn’t call him “annoying scatterbrain” for nothing.
This scatterbrain would figure out a way!
His way was biting Scott again, escaping the cage in the clinic, scampering to the sheriff’s station, which thankfully was not too far away because he did not want to get eaten by some ravenous bird, and sneaking onto an empty desk to type out an email to Isaac to come the station ASAP for an issue with his driver’s license—(Stiles was not the most creative on an empty stomach, okay.)
Nevertheless, it worked.
Stiles picked a little corner under a bench by the door to nap while he waited until he caught Isaac’s scent wafting in, which was basically an overwhelming note of leather combat boots and citrus-scented hair gel? Hair mousse?
Why could he smell that Isaac was wearing leather combat boots?
He didn’t know how he felt about his enhanced sense of smell. As for his hearing, however, he absolutely loved it—he could eavesdrop on Isaac’s confused conversations with various policemen and women without moving a single inch from his hiding spot until Isaac finally left after being told they had no idea what the email was about.
If his palms could sweat, they would.
This was the crucial part, scampering on Isaac’s heels close enough that he could squeeze his way through the doors opening and closing. He made it out the front door, somehow, but when he hopped into the front passenger’s side of Derek’s Camaro with Isaac, he nearly got smushed in half by the car door.
No, he definitely didn’t spend the whole car ride trembling under the front passenger’s seat from the near death experience and thinking about how to not go through that again. Definitely not.
His solution, honestly, probably only worked because Isaac wasn’t the most observant person.
Okay, scratch that—he was observant for a person, but not for a werewolf. At the moment, anyway.
So Stiles might’ve hung onto the back inside hem of Isaac’s loose jacket for dear life.
Not one of his brightest ideas, because swinging to and fro while mentally sweating buckets at the possibility of falling and getting crushed by a foot any second or being found out and crushed by a foot any second felt worse than just trying to sneakily follow.
On the bright side though, he didn’t need to worry about making it inside Derek’s flat without getting destroyed by the door closing. Once inside, he immediately let go and hid behind a pillar to try and figure out how best to get Derek’s attention without Derek trying to chase him out with a broom.
Well, actually, Derek would probably just grab him in one swift swipe and throw him out. Or break his neck.
However, as he bided his time muddling over what to do, he heard Derek and Isaac discuss their fruitless searches for Boyd and Erica with increasing graveness that ended in Isaac asking for the fifth time why they weren’t asking Scott for help and leaving in a huff.
The remaining atmosphere reigned in a silence so tense that Stiles changed his mind about attempting to ask Derek for help.
That, and Derek clearly had much more important things to worry about. Stiles had already been helping him in terms of keeping an eye out if the police spotted anything, but there wasn’t much more he could do and Derek didn’t want Scott involved, mostly because he already knew that Erica and Boyd weren’t just ‘missing.’ They’d left the pack, sure, but Derek and Isaac already knew that this pack of alphas—Stiles still didn’t get how that was a thing—had done something to Erica and Boyd; the only issue was that they couldn’t find the pack.
And here Stiles was, freaking out about turning into a hamster.
It wasn’t actually that bad, in perspective.
Besides the part where no one knew he existed as a hamster, but that was still a hell of a lot better than Erica and Boyd’s missing-and-hopefully-not-dead status at the moment.
Maybe he’d actually be able to help as hamster. After all, he could surely sneak into all sorts of places with his tiny size and even if someone saw him, they’d think nothing of it besides the fact that they might need to call pest control soon.
Stiles’ spirits lifted minutely.
If he could actually help, then they’d also be prone to believing that he was no ordinary hamster, and then maybe they’d actually realize that he was Stiles despite the spell’s weird memory-blurring and no-communication thing.
Oh god, he was going to be stuck as a hamster forever, wasn’t he? He was going to be stuck as a hamster forever, and everyone would think he was studying abroad forever.
Actually, now that he was a hamster, did that mean he had the lifespan of one? Because while he was no hamster expert, he seriously doubted they lived that long.
So basically he was so screwed that he might as well get comfortable in attempting to live as a hamster.
The moon had already risen for a while by the time Stiles stopped having his meltdown over his future, and probably short, life as a hamster. Derek was nowhere to be seen, probably having gone to bed judging by the dark room and turned off lights, so Stiles began roaming the place. Despite his tiny size, he didn’t find many issues climbing up onto the kitchen counter—if anything, he disliked how everything seemed so... big now. It was such a pain feeling like he’d walked half a mile just to get from the front door to the kitchen pantry.
The clipped bag of cheese puffs he found was worth it though.
He nearly cried with relief when the cheese puff tasted just as delicious and unhealthy as it always did, because he did not want to have to subsist on solely hamster food. Whatever that was.
He really didn’t know a single fucking thing about hamsters, honestly.
But at least he wouldn’t starve, and probably wouldn’t die from eating food that wasn’t hamster food, and if that wasn’t a huge upside, he didn’t know what was.
After grabbing himself two cheese puffs to go, he rummaged around drawers as quietly as possible to prepare for bed. He decided to set up camp at the corner of the windowsill in the living room, because hey, he might as well take advantage of a nice view while he ate his late night snacks.
That was another thing—scrounging for food took so much damn effort. He swore an hour had passed by the time he could finally relax in his makeshift bed that consisted of a clean kitchen towel that he folded as a pillow and an oven mitt alongside his snacks: two cheese puffs, a small jar of peanut butter that he’d broken his back dragging over, and some sliced apples he’d taken from the fridge.
Not sure why they were sliced when neither Derek or Isaac looked the type to eat apples, much less slice them beforehand, but he thanked the heavens that one of them did, though to be honest, even the slices looked kind of big to him....
Nevertheless, he sweated his ass off—mentally, because could hamsters even sweat?—trying to unscrew the lid of the jaw. His big brain had lugged over a spoon too, so he propped the spoon against the jar to use as a ramp for his apple slice peanut butter dipping efforts.
A lot of work for seemingly nothing, but he deserved a reward after the day he’d had, even if that was just granny smith apple slices dipped in peanut butter that took him probably a hundred nibbles to even make one human-sized bite.
No wonder hamsters had short lives.
He also had no clue how much was too much to eat as a hamster and couldn’t give less of a shit at the moment when this was basically his first meal after spending the whole day running around freaking out and nearly dying, so he went in for another fat swipe of peanut butter after finally finishing his first human baby-sized bite—
Someone was squatting there in front of him.
Stiles froze where he stood perched on the rim of the open jar of peanut butter, apple slice in his arms as he looked straight back at who else but Derek just staring at him a foot away, face at the same level as Stiles, in utter silence.
He really wanted his apple and peanut butter though.
Really wanted it.
So he swiped his apple slice in the jar for the fattest blob of peanut butter that he could, then shoved the whole apple slice in his mouth because his cheeks were apparently humongous, a fact that he’d noticed when nibbling away.
It sort of made sense. Kind of like squirrels hoarding nuts, probably.
But if he had such a huge ass mouth, why couldn’t he take huge ass bites? That was his burning question.
And Derek just continued staring at him and he just continued staring back, except now slowly chewing on the apple slice filling his cheeks and hoping that he didn’t die from choking on it.
Derek squinted his eyes—Stiles stiffened, at the ready to flee for his life.
With his cheese puffs, of course.
What Derek said, though, he wouldn’t have guess in a million years.
“...Stiles?”
He really did choke then. And fell right off the jar onto the oven mitt.
Derek rubbed his face with a grimace. “Please tell me you’re not choking. I don’t know shit about what to do when hamsters choke.”
Lucky for him, Stiles hacked up his apple slice with gasping breaths, then flopped on his back. "I just saw my life flash before my eyes,” he muttered despite knowing Derek wouldn’t be able to understand him anyway—a huge wave of exhausting relief washed over him. "I eat a lot of pizza. But thank god you actually recognize me. Somehow. I guess I won’t die completely alone.”
Derek’s brows furrowed. “You’re...dying? As a hamster? What the fuck did you do?”
“Huh? No, I just meant hamsters probably don’t live that long, right?” said Stiles. “And I didn’t do shit! I was trying to make a broom sweep the floor and next thing I knew, I was like this! And everyone thinks I’m studying abroad and when I try to type out what happened, it turns into weird ass symbols, so now I’m stuck—” He paused. “Wait, did you just reply me? You didn’t, right?”
“I think you hurt your head too,” muttered Derek. “Who the fuck else do you think replied you?”
Stiles shot up so fast he gave himself whiplash. “You can understand me?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t ‘yeah?’ me, Scott didn’t understand me!”
Derek blinked. “You sound like you usually do, though. Except quieter, thank god for that.”
“Hey, don’t think I won’t smack you!”
“Good luck.”
Stiles paused, then scampered over to where Derek’s hand rested on the edge of the windowsill and flopped down on it in a big hug. Or a tiny one, more like.
“That doesn’t look like a smack,” said Derek, peering closer at him. “Now tell me what happened. How did you even get here?”
After Stiles relayed all the events of the day, Derek stayed silent in thought for a long moment before asking, “So you’ve been here for hours already? Why haven’t you tried to get my attention yet?”
“Oh. Well,” Stiles hesitated. “I figure it’s not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. After I had a meltdown about it, anyway.”
“You turning into a hamster that can’t tell anyone you’re a hamster isn’t a big deal,” deadpanned Derek.
Stiles rolled around on the back of Derek’s hand. “I mean, it could be worse right? I could be dead. Or trapped. In buttfuck who knows where.”
Derek sighed and stopped his rolls with a finger. “We’ll find them. And we’ll figure you out. Stay here and don’t move, I’m going to call Deaton.”
“Where the crap would I go?” muttered Stiles. “Getting to this windowsill felt like climbing a damn mountain.”
So he sat there for thirty minutes, nibbling away at his cheese puffs as he listened to Derek’s muffled voice in the bedroom. When Derek finally emerged, he came back to Stiles swiping another apple slice in peanut butter.
“…Have you been eating this whole time?”
“It takes forever just to eat one bite,” retorted Stiles.
“But you’re a hamster,” said Derek. “Deaton says you’re supposed to only eat a tablespoon of hamster food a day.”
Stiles paused his vigorous munching. “Yeah, and what did he say about people-turned-hamsters, huh? A fat load of nothing I bet, so he can kiss my fat hamster ass!”
“Wow.”
“What, am I wrong?” Stiles went back to munching on peanut butter—it was beginning to get stuck in his cheeks so he had to use the apple slice to properly eat it.
“…This is weird,” said Derek after a long pause. He rubbed his face. “I’m going to sleep. But yeah, Deaton doesn’t know shit and I question how much he believed me, so I’ll go get your spellbook tomorrow and we can go from there.”
“Wait, take me with you!”
Derek blinked. “What, tomorrow?”
“No, nowww,” griped Stiles as he latched onto the back of Derek’s hand for dear life. “I wanna sleep on the bed. My body aches from running around and you don’t need all that space anyway, I mean it’s a queen si—”
Derek scooped him up in his other hand. “Yeah, yeah, fine, just shut up.”
“Stupid sourwolf,” Stiles muttered under his breath.
“Wanna sleep in your oven mitt?”
“Beautiful sourwolf,” said Stiles, and Derek mumbled some choice words that Stiles didn’t quite catch, but he plopped him down on the right side of the bed with a curt “Stay on your side.”
Stiles rolled his eyes.
