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It was one of those days where everything was going wrong. His Jeep wouldn’t start when he went to go to class that morning, he ended up having to take the local public bus and ended up getting there late. On top of that, Mr. Harris gave him detention for absolutely no reason, as always.
He ended up pulling a muscle in his calf during lacrosse practice, and that was after getting beamed in the back of the head with the ball while he was turned around on the bench looking for something in his bag. Before he could even ask Scott for a ride home from school, he had vanished, either off to work or to pine for Allison. And, as if the gods were cursing him, he missed the bus.
Stiles stood there, watching the back of the buss disappear around a corner and sighed, deciding that walking home wasn’t really that bad, was it? Oh, no, no, no. It seems that the heavens above were having a gay old time at torturing him and the vivid blue, Californian sky opened up into a sudden down pour when he was about a third of the way to school.
He bit his tongue to keep from commenting about how things couldn’t possibly get worse. He was already jinxed and really didn’t think that incurring more anger from above would do him any good in the long run.
So, he trudged, his body aching, cold, wet, and tired. He never even saw the truck as it came speeding up the slick road, fishtailing and the back end of it hitting him, sending him sprawling on the grass of the lawn of some probably happy family. The driver didn’t even have the decency to stop and get out and check on him.
He lay there is the mud and grass for a long moment, unable to distinguish if he was crying or if it was just rain running down his face. It took him an inordinate amount of time for him to get home. His dad was gone, at work. He checked the fridge to make sure he had taken the healthy meal that he made for him the night before.
He hadn’t. Stiles groaned and hit his head against the refrigerator door a few times before peeling off his soggy clothed and forcing himself up the stairs. That itself was a chore, as was scrubbing himself down from mud and blood. There was a gash in his hip that he hadn’t exactly had the will to pay attention to as he walked. He hadn’t called 911 because that would mean worrying his dad and worrying his dad always made him feel worse.
Thankfully patching up the werewolf population had given him practical practice with actual first-aide and he managed to do a pretty good job of cleaning and bandaging the wound. He told himself that he would just go to the hospital if it didn’t make any progress in healing over the next few days.
Just as he was crossing the hall to his bedroom there was a loud crack outside and the lights flickered for a second before going out completely. He cussed and flailed a bit cracking his hand against a sturdy wooden table that was in the hallway, only adding to his cussing and flailing more.
By the time he actually made it to his bed in the dark, he was sobbing. His head was pounding and there was a distinct feel of fever to his skin. So on top of the shit day that he was having, he was probably going to spend the next few days fighting off a cold because of walking home in the rain.
He curled into a ball on his bed, his face pressed into the blankets and just let it all out, sobbing loudly and shaking. His chest ached, his heart hammering as the day settled in on him and flared up the panic that was ever present in the shadows of his mind. Now the day really couldn’t get any worse, nope, couldn’t possibly happen.
As he lay there, fighting to get his breathing under control, the window to his room slid open and a dark from seemed to just pool into the room. Stiles sat up scooting back against his wall, his eyes wide as he stared at the sudden intruder, no one immediately clicking with the shape of the form.
“Why the hell are you sitting in the dark?” Derek’s voice floated out from the darkness.
“P-p-power’s out.” Stiles replied, his flighty heart calming a decimal as he finally was able to connect who had flowed into his room like liquid darkness, there to swallow him up completely.
“It probably just flipped the breakers, don’t you know how to do that?” Derek asked, the scowl coming over in his voice.
“Yes,” Stiles replied shivering and hugging himself.
“Are you okay?” Derek moved closer, he could barely be made out from the gloomy half light coming from the window.
“N-no.” Stiles sobbed out and pressed his fevered forehead to his arms. “No. I… Today just keeps getting worse and worse and I—I can’t take it anymore. I can’t breath.”
Derek eased on the bed, moving to touch him and Stiles stiffened.
“Don’t! Don’t touch me! I can’t—don’t.” Stiles scrambled back from him, almost falling off the bed.
Derek retreated a bit. “I’m going to go turn the lights down. I need you to concentrate on your breathing while I’m gone, Stiles.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can.” Derek said softly. “You can do anything, Stiles. Remember the thing you did at the club when Jackson was a Kanima? You can do anything you set your mind to, you’re powerful. You just have to believe.”
Stiles made a pained noise, closing his eyes, concentrating hard on reigning control over his breathing. He forced himself to focus inside, so when the lights came back on, he startled and looked around, realizing that he hadn’t heard Derek leave the room.
Derek came back into the room, his shirt plastered to his chest with rainwater. If he wasn’t having a panic attack on top of his bad day, he might have taken the time to appreciate how the shirt looked soaked to his skin. Derek frowned, his eyebrows shifted to a position of concern that Stiles had never gotten to witness before.
The werewolf sat on the edge of the bed. “Are you okay? Can I touch you now?”
Stiles nodded a bit, still shaking. Derek reached out, brushing the back of his fingers over the teen’s forehead, the frown on his face deepening more.
“You’re burning up. And I can smell a fresh wound on you, what happened?”
Stiles took a deep, shuddering breath. “I got hit by a truck.”
Derek was suddenly closer, pulling down the night pants to look at the wound. “Why the hell didn’t you go to the hospital? How the hell did you get hurt like this in your Jeep?”
Stiles slapped at his hand, swallowing. He took another deep breath before launching into how horrible his day had been up until the point of Derek’s stalker patented breaking and entering move. He was shaking a bit still but over all he had managed to get calmed more as he poured out all the bad, leaving him empty.
Derek slid up next to him, his arms slipping around the gangly teen. “You’re going to get sick. We need to break your fever.”
“Yeah, well right now all I want to do is curl up and cry.” Stiles admitted, laying his head instinctively against the older man’s shoulder.
Derek shifted a bit next to him. “Sit forward.”
Stiles blinked a bit and did was was asked of him, scooting a bit on his sore ass forward on the bed. Derek moved so he was behind him, pulling the teen back against his chest and enveloping him in a warm embrace. Stiles felt all the tension just sort of flow out of him and he melted back against Derek.
The werewolf had his arms wrapped around him, one hand resting on his shoulder the other resting on the injured hip. His thumb was stroking over the bandage, each pass over it relieving pain just a little.
Stiles blinked a few times, trying to keep awake, his head hanging forward. Derek lifted his hand off his shoulder and put it against his forehead, tilting his head back against his own shoulder.
“You need to rest, Stiles.” Derek said softly, his breath ghosting over the pale skin of the teenager.
Any other time, Stiles would be aroused and frustrated with the werewolf. However, right at the moment, he was too exhausted to even keep his eyes open, let alone be aroused by anything.
He dozed off quickly and Derek sat there, holding him. He pressed his face against the teen’s should, frowning at the thready pulse that beat quickly against his own skin. Stiles reeked of illness and pain. There was a linger of panic to him and Derek tried his best to soothe it away, muttering softly to the teen even though he already knew that Stiles was long passed out.
When he had come over, he had intended on using the teen’s laptop and maybe taking a hot shower. Now he was using his supernatural heat to break Stiles’ fever, though he wasn’t sure that his wet clothes were going to do much in the way of helping.
He frowned a bit and carefully laid Stiles down, getting up and stripping out of his clothes and grabbing some dry ones that he had stashed in the back of the teen’s closet. He decided while he was up that he was going to get a few bottles of water from downstairs and make sure that Stiles had properly cleaned the wound on his hip.
He peeled the bandage back and raised his eyebrows, impressed by the teen’s handy work. It wasn’t deep, just running long up and over his left hipbone where the truck’s tailgate had hit him. Derek carefully changed the bandages out and rubbed down the medical tape, his fingers stroking the skin.
He wrangled Stiles under the blankets, frowning a bit as he noticed how pale the boy was. He reached down stroking his fingers over his skin. The fever was still there, raging hard under his skin.
Derek went across the hall to the bathroom and got fever relievers, coming back and shaking Stiles awake. “Come on, you need to take these.”
Stiles blinked, startling a bit, looking confused and disorientated. “Where’m I?”
“You’re in your bedroom. Take these.” He helped him sit up, getting him to take the pills.
Stiles gulped the water down greedily before he finally settled back into the blankets, blinking tiredly. “You’re not gonna run off ‘re you?”
“No.” Derek replied, closing the bedroom door. “You need to break that fever and I am not going anywhere until I’m sure you’re not going to kill yourself doing something stupid.”
Stiles snorted a bit, yawning and laying his head heavily on the pillow. “Y’just don’t wanna admit that y’like me.”
“You’re an idiot. Go back to sleep.” Derek turned off the lights, having made sure everything downstairs was off when he came back with the water.
He climbed into the bed with the teenager, right under the covers. He slid his arms under him and made sure that he was held securely against his chest. Stiles was facing him this time, his face pressed against the werewolf’s chest. Derek held him, his chin resting atop his buzz-fuzz hair.
He didn’t know when it had started becoming a reoccurring issue, but this was the second time that he had ended up cuddled to the boy. The last time it had been when he had been attacked by hunters and went to Stiles through sheer instinct. Now, here he was again, being the comforter instead of the comfortee, not that Stiles hadn’t needed comforting last time, himself.
Stiles was so cocksure and full of energy that seeing him shaken and panicking for any reason upset Derek. It shook him to the core to see him so scared that he couldn’t move. It made him want to cling to the teenager, pet his peach fuzz hair and tell him that everything was going to be fine.
Derek sighed and closed his eyes, allowing for himself to relax, listening to the breathing of the young man curled against him. Everything would have to wait for now, he could put things on hold to make sure the spastic teenager was well enough for anything they might encounter.
Right now, he was more than happy to just lay there, holding the occasionally shivering Stiles as he used his supernatural body heat to help break the fever. He owed so much to the boy as it was, it only made sense to repay some of his dues. Or at least that was what he was telling the voice in his head that kept saying that this whole thing was much, much more than just him being a good Alpha to a member of his pack.
However, even Derek knew he was lying to himself.