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“Well, things could always be worse.”
Derek looked from side to side, taking in the entirety of the small damp cellar in a single glance. Black mold ran along the walls, dimly lit by a single flickering tungsten bulb. The room stunk of musty air, gun oil and the acrid smell of Stiles’ underlying fear. He turned back to Stiles and raised an eyebrow.
“I’m locked in a 10x10 cell. With you,” Derek replied.
“Okay, so first, I’ll have you know that I am a pleasure to be around! But secondly, if we must go with that, it could still be worse. You could be locked in a 10x10 cell with two me’s.”
Derek raised his eyebrows further.
“Yeah, that’s right, betcha didn’t think about clones! Oh come on, don’t give me that look, if werewolves can exist, why can’t clones? And then you’d be outnumbered two to one, and one of the clones would be evil, because that’s always the way, and me and the clone would have to wrestle to the death, and then it’d be me, you, and a dead Stiles corpse stinking up the 10x10 room.”
Derek wrinkled his nose. “Thank you for that delightful imagery.”
“Your turn now.”
“My turn to do what?”
“Come up with something worse! What’s worse than being locked up in here with two Stileses?”
Derek paused long enough that Stiles began to think he was receiving the silent treatment, before: “Three Stileses.”
“Hey!”
“Okay, so what’s worse than being trapped in a room with three Stileses, with a floor covered in Lego, blindfolded, while playing Carly Rae Jepsen on repeat, with frostbite, and the sensation that you need to sneeze but are never able to?”
Derek’s brow furrowed. Eventually, he answered, “Snakes.”
“Snakes?”
“The room is filled with snakes.”
“What’s wrong with snakes?” Stiles protested.
“They’re freaky and slimy and-”
“Snakes are not slimy! They’re lovely and smooth. Have you ever actually touched a snake?”
Derek’s silence was answer enough.
“Okay, new rule,” said Stiles. “As soon as we get out of here, I’m taking you to a petting zoo and we are correcting your harmful stereotypes about the poor innocent snakes.”
Stiles sighed as he examined the cracks on the ceiling for the eightieth time. The first night they’d been here, he’d been adamant that he wasn’t resting his head on that grimy floor. Who knows what kind of germs and bugs could crawl into his ears from there! After two days without a shower, however, he wasn’t sure he was much cleaner than his surroundings. With the meager meals they were being given, Stiles decided to lay down before he fell down.
“Hey,” he called out to Derek. “What would you be doing right now? If you weren’t captured, I mean.”
“How should I know?”
“Because it’s your routine! I mean it’s what, Saturday now? So for me, I’d probably be playing WoW and ignoring the looming presence of homework in the background. What about you?”
Derek grunted, then said, “Training.”
Stiles rolled over to meet Derek’s eyes. “Training for what?”
“Danger.”
“Eloquent.” Stiles eyed the room and then admitted, “But probably a good idea. What else?”
“What do you mean?”
“What else do you do when you’re not training or being abducted by sadistic hunters?”
Derek grumbled, then walked away (which, in their cozy little room, meant turning to stare at the wall with his arms crossed).
“Waaait,” said Stiles. “Please tell me you do something other than train and brood. I know that I am, as previously established, a pleasure to be around, but there has got to be a better highlight to your week than sneaking into teenage boys’ bedrooms!”
Stiles hadn’t meant for that last sentence to come out like… well, like that, and he was glad that the low light hid his ruddy cheeks.
“I don’t brood.”
“Dear god. We need to get you a hobby. First thing after getting out of here: petting zoo. Second thing: find you a hobby. Any suggestions on where to start?”
Derek growled.
“Seriously, you should really start thinking. Otherwise, I’ll pick for you, and you might end up in the Knitters of Beacon Hills club. I hear Maureen has been looking for new blood…” Stiles said.
“How do you know the name of the head of the Knitters of Beacon Hills?”
“Oh Derek, haven’t you worked it out by now?” Stiles wiggled his fingers spookily. “I know everything.”
“You’re quiet,” accused Derek.
“Sorry?”
“It’s been hours since you said anything. I haven’t heard you shut up for that long outside of sleeping, and your breathing hasn’t been regular enough for you to be asleep.”
Stiles blinked. “You listen to my breathing? That’s not creepy at all.”
Derek sighed like Stiles’ every word was a blight on his existence, then dredged up, “What’s wrong?”
“Aw Der-bear, you do care!”
Derek’s incisors drew longer and two red beads began to glow in his eyes. “I don’t- You’re just a canary.”
“Aaaand you lost me.”
“In the past, coal miners brought canaries with them into the mines. If there were dangerous gases around, the canary would die and provide an early warning to the miners to get out,” Derek said.
“They killed those poor birds? Well thanks for turning this situation,” Stiles motioned wildly with his hands to encapsulate the room, “somehow even more depressing!”
“My point is, when the canary stops singing, it’s a very bad sign. So again, what’s. Wrong?”
Stiles sighed, then rolled onto his side, resting his head on his arm. From this position, he couldn’t see Derek and felt a small amount of privacy. “It’s just that by my count it’s Monday today. Which means I didn’t turn up to school, which means the school will have called Dad to tell him I’m playing hooky, which means he now knows that I’m missing and he’ll be going out of his mind with worry. I was really hoping Scott would have found us by now and he’d never have to know.”
Derek frowned. “He wouldn’t have noticed before?”
Stiles chuckled a hollow laugh. “We’re not super getting along right now. He doesn’t tend to ask where I am anymore because he doesn’t trust me not to lie to him about it.”
Most people would have tried to find some comforting words, remind him that his dad still loved him. Derek was not most people. After the silent seconds strung out like a strand of honey being pulled thin, Stiles clenched his jaw tight against the unearned disappointment in his chest. He screwed his eyes shut and attempted to drift back into sleep.
A hand roughly grabbed his shoulder and hauled him up into a sitting position, back against the wall. Stiles’ eyes flew open to see Derek settle next to him, his body a line of fire pressed against his side like an almost forceful reminder of support. Derek knocked his ankle against Stiles’. They sat together mutely under the whining and ticking of the tungsten light.
“Okay, new game!” said Stiles. “Let’s play ‘I Spy’. I spy with my little eye, something beginning with ‘D’.”
“Dirt?”
“No.”
“Damp?”
“No.”
“Dust?”
“No.”
Derek heaved a sigh. “...Derek?”
“Ding ding ding we have a winner!”
“Woodworking.”
“Which is why women- What?” Stiles stumbled over his sentence. In his defense, he had been in the middle of a monologue on the virtues of 1800s hoop skirts, so you could forgive him a little confusion over Derek’s new addition to the conversation.
“It’s a hobby.”
“It sure is buddy,” Stiles said, nodding his head as he encouraged further answers to present themselves. Derek glared at him instead. Finally, Stiles made the connection to their conversation from a few days before and a grin spread across his face. “Oh! Would you like to try it?”
“I’ve been learning some techniques while working on the house and repairing some of the more rotted areas.”
“Oh god,” Stiles wailed, “even your hobbies are depressing.”
A low, rumbling growl settled deep in Derek’s chest, vibrating through Stiles’ bones and setting the prey instincts in the back of his head alight.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry! I just mean that we need to get you onto a nice course where you can learn to carve wooden birds, or a nice dresser, or whatever woodcarvers do, instead of applying your new skills to rebuilding the charred remains of your family home! ”
“It’s a more useful application of my time,” said Derek, a statement that would have been more convincing had it not been garbled through a mouthful of fangs.
“Yeah, and the whole time that you’re working, you’re trying to avoid looking too closely at that red stain on the floorboard!”
The prey instinct in his brain deplored him to shut up, but Stiles found himself on his feet instead, wagging a finger in the werewolf’s face. The mental image of Derek, alone in his big old house, was just too sad.
Derek glared at him, eyes fully blood red now. Stiles met his challenge and stared right back, refusing to roll over. He crossed his arms and stepped into Derek’s space. Derek’s gaze flickered away first.
“Wooden birds?” Derek scoffed.
“Well I don’t know what woodcarvers do, do I?”
“I thought you knew,” Derek wriggled his fingers, “eeeeverything.”
“And I will do, after you go on that course and report back.”
“94 bottles of beer on the wall, 94 bottles of beer. Take one down, pass it around-”
“Stiles?”
“Yes, Derek?”
“Shut up before I rip your arm off and shove it so far down your throat, you’ll be able to feel your own ass.”
“What do you think they want with us?”
“Hmm?” Derek replied.
“Well, I thought that they’d come down to torture us for information or something, and other than occasionally passing food in, they haven’t interacted with us at all. Not that I’m begrudging the lack of torture, really, very pro no torture over here!”
“Honestly? I think we were a mistake. Or at least you were,” said Derek.
“Ah, it’s always good to feel wanted.”
Derek continued as if Stiles hadn’t spoken. “They were going to kill me, but use me as bait to lure in the rest of my pack first. But none of my pack came for me. You did.”
He eyed Stiles with a sort of cautious disbelief, like he was trying to work out what motivation he could have had for following Derek’s bloody trail into the trap.
“What?” said Stiles. “I wasn’t just going to leave you to die.”
“Anyway, they were ready to close the mountain ash circle the moment you stepped in the door… but then you walked through it.”
“And they knew I wasn’t a wolf.”
“And they knew you weren’t a wolf. These hunters aren’t like- aren’t like Kate. They may take liberties with the Code, but they won’t outright break it. They weren’t about to kill a human, especially not when you turned out to be the son of the Sheriff. I don’t think they knew what to do next.”
“So what, you think the hunters are upstairs, just… panicking?” Stiles laughed in gleeful abandon at the mental image. “Running around like headless chickens shouting, ‘We fucked up, we fucked up!’ ”
Derek shrugged.
“Well this is good news, isn’t it?” asked Stiles. “It’s been days now, long enough for them to agree a game plan. They might just give up and let us go.”
Maybe. But in Derek’s experience, it would be far easier to just… wipe the slate clean. Derek kept his mouth shut. Stiles didn’t need to worry about that.
“...so that’s when I said to him, if you won’t wear the tutu, you’re not getting on the donkey!” Stiles concluded his tale and reached for the water bottle that had been tossed in for them to share this morning. He groaned as he realized it had already been drained.
Derek looked up at the sound and frowned. Stiles’ voice was already scratchy and dry, his throat almost painful to listen to.
“Anyway, that wasn’t even the best bit of that holiday-” Stiles rasped out.
“Stiles, stop,” Derek said. “You’re going to wear your voice out. Take a rest.”
“But I…”
“What? What could possibly be so important about this anecdote that it can’t wait an hour?”
Stiles squirmed, giving an embarrassed smile. “I’m a canary?”
I didn’t want to worry you. Derek heard it as clearly as if Stiles had said it aloud. He cursed himself for his clumsy language.
“You don’t- I didn’t mean you had to keep talking for my sake. I won’t think the world is ending if you take a break.”
“It’s fine, I don’t mind, really,” said Stiles. “Talking is kind of my superpower.”
“I’m sure even Batman needs a break every now and then.”
“Did-” Stiles boggled. “Did you just pick the superhero most famous for not having a superpower as your example? You seriously need to read more comics. Add it to the list: first-”
“-First, petting zoo; second, woodworking class; third, read more comics. Yes, I know.” Derek huffed and glared at an unassuming spot on the floor, already regretting what he was about to say. “Why don’t I talk for a bit, and you can rest your voice?”
Stiles immediately brightened, scrambling up to his knees and scooting closer to Derek. “Oh yes, Grandpa Derek, please tell me a bedtime story!”
See, Derek knew he was going to regret it.
“I’m not actually that old, you know,” he grumbled. “Particularly not in wolf years.”
The last part slipped out unintentionally, muttered under his breath, but Derek should have known better than to think Stiles would let anything slip past him. Stiles pounced upon the comment like a hunter spotting weak prey.
“You were talking about your favorite vacations, right?” Derek rushed out to change the topic. “I remember when Laura-”
“Oh no no no, we aren’t letting that one go under the radar. Please explain how ‘wolf years’ work – mathematically, culturally, and maturity-wise. Preferably with diagrams. We’re locked in here together, Derek, there is literally no escape this time.”
Well damn.
Stiles was sick. Inevitable really, when combining unsanitary conditions with stress and not enough food, of course his immune system was going to take a nosedive. Knowing this did not make the situation any less miserable. His knees and back and neck ached with fever, and his teeth chattered in the cold.
“C’mere,” grunted Derek, pulling his head into Derek’s lap.
Stiles sighed in relief at the body heat that soaked into him. Derek threaded his fingers into Stiles’ hair and started massaging his scalp. Stiles’ eyes drooped half closed at the sparks of pleasure running down from his head. That was nice. Really nice. Derek was nice.
“Der’k, you ‘re nice,” Stiles slurred.
“Shut up,” Derek said fondly. Probably fondly. Stiles was going to take that as fond.
“How you doin’ that?”
“I’m taking some of your pain. It’s part of the Gift.”
Stiles squinted up at Derek in confusion before spotting the black lines running along his veins. Stiles spent several seconds processing this.
“Woah,” he concluded eloquently.
Stiles let his eyes slip closed again, drifting in a feverish half-dream for what could have been either five minutes or three hours. His world narrowed to the palm on his head and the thigh beneath his cheek. Finally, he roused enough to speak again.
“Wish I’d been tracking Scott here, not you.”
The hand in his hair froze, then withdrew. Stiles squirmed and made a miserable noise of protest, chasing the comfort being taken away. As Derek’s magic pain-pulling effect drained away, the world became sharper, like he was weaning off a drug. As it did so, Stiles became aware of the tension in the leg below him, and he sat up bolt upright.
“No, no, not like that! It’s not that I don’t want you here, it’s that I’d rather have you out there!”
“Okay Stiles,” Derek said, but his voice was hollow and wooden. Robbed of all the easy warmth Stiles hadn’t even realised Derek had been relaxing into until it was suddenly gone.
“No, really. I just mean that if you were out there, I know you’d be coming for me right now. We’d be on our way to freedom already.”
“Right, of course.”
“It’s the truth! You have to believe me!”
“I believe you Stiles,” Derek said, in a tone that suggested he very much did not believe Stiles. “Listen, I’m tired. We should both get some sleep before the hunters come back tomorrow morning. Could be a fight ahead.”
He stood up, stooping over to avoid hitting his head on the low roof, and shuffled as far over to the far wall as he could. He lay down, curling up with his back to Stiles. Stiles wrung his hands, guilt boring into his stomach like acid. He wanted to push and needle and generally Stiles all over him until Derek believed him, but his usually neglected common sense whispered that it would only explode in his face. The two of them had tempers that didn’t always react well together. Derek deserved better than rash words and poorly communicated arguments.
“Okay Derek,” Stiles said softly, backing up to the opposite wall to give him the most amount of privacy he could offer. Even so, if they both reached out, they could almost touch each other in this cramped room.
The rough brickwork grated against his skin. He shivered. It was going to be a cold night.
“85, 86, 87…” counted Derek, his chest glistening with a slight sheen of sweat as he practised his morning push-ups. Stiles swallowed and fixed his eyes on the ceiling, trying not to think about the controlled strength in those defined muscles, the small grunts of exertion, the beads of sweat trailing down the small of his back.
“Scott never came for me. Last time.”
Stiles blinked in surprise. Even he hadn’t known he was about to say that.
“You made me lose count,” Derek rebuked.
“87.”
He nodded sharply, then lowered himself back to the floor again. “88… 89… 90…”
Stiles was so focused on the ceiling that it took him a moment to notice Derek’s counting had trailed off. He rolled over to find Derek sitting up, staring at him.
“Last time?”
“Back when Gerard kidnapped me, remember? He had me in his basement, you know, hitting me, for a couple of hours and I kept thinking that Scott was going to come bursting through the door any moment, teeth bared and claws at the ready, but he never did. He never even noticed I was gone. Anyway, that’s what I meant, yesterday. If it was you on the outside, looking for me, you’d be coming for me already.”
Stiles waited for Derek to respond, but nothing came. Anxiously, he began to fill the silence himself. “That didn’t come out right. I love Scott, and if he knew I was in trouble he would come for me. I’m just, not always first on his list of priorities.”
“Stiles…”
“It’s true,” Stiles shrugged. “But that’s not a bad thing. Don’t get me wrong, I got annoyed about it when Allison was all he would think about, but now… Scott’s basically a comic book hero. Lives depend on him. That’s a lot to put on one sixteen-year-old’s shoulders.”
Stiles laughed humorlessly and shook his head.
“But me? I’m not a hero. I’m not like Scott. I’m selfish. I have my small group of loved ones - Scott, my dad, maybe Lyds - and if it kept them safe? I’d let the whole world burn. Wouldn’t even hesitate.”
Derek was still silent. Was he judging Stiles? Did he think Stiles was obsessive? Amoral? Psychopathic?
“C’mon man, say something!”
“Gerard kidnapped you?”
Stiles blinked. “Uh, yeah? You knew that.”
“No, Stiles, I didn’t.”
“I know you were very busy with the whole Jackson-being-dead-then-alive-then-a-werewolf thing, but I know you saw me with my face all busted up that night.”
“That was him? He tortured you?”
“Well, I mean. He hit me a couple of times. It’s not the same as torture. What he was doing to Erica and Boyd, that was torture.”
“You said… Stiles, you said hours,” said Derek in a pained voice.
“Again, Boyd and Erica had it worse.”
“They’re werewolves! It’s not the same thing. Our pain tolerance is higher, our bodies heal. We can withstand stuff you can’t.”
Stiles surged up, pressing into Derek’s personal space and pointing a furious finger into his face. “Are you implying I can’t look after myself? Because out of the two of us, I think you’ll find it was the big bad wolf who was being used as bait, and the puny human the one that came to rescue him!”
“Nice rescue,” scoffed Derek, looking around the fetid basement.
“Okay fangface, keep it up and we’ll see if I come after you next time.”
“You shouldn’t have come after me this time! Hunters already kidnapped and beat you once, and then you deliberately put yourself in danger again, for me of all people. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that you deserved better than being poached like an animal!”
“Well I don’t!”
Derek’s shaky panting sounded way too loud in the cell’s silence. Just his breathing, the buzzing of the tungsten light, and the echoes of all the words he wasn’t saying.
Stiles smelled wrong. His normal scent was clouded with the sallow acid stink of sickness and he kept shivering. Derek shrugged off his jacket and wrapped it around Stiles’ shoulders. The boy jumped under his touch.
“Does this mean you forgive me?” Stiles asked.
Derek pulled Stiles close, willing his body heat to warm him up and stop those blasted shivers. “There’s nothing to forgive. Listen, what you said about Scott- about not being sure you’re his top priority...”
“What?”
“I will come for you. I swear it. I will always come for you.”
“Never have I ever had a one-night stand.”
Derek grumbled but put down a finger. “Never have I ever drunk-dialled an ex.”
“Aw, thank you for your boundless optimism!”
Derek tilted his head.
“Most people wouldn’t imagine I might have had an ex.”
“Why not?” Derek asked, looking lost.
“Because, you know…” Stiles gestured vaguely at all of him.
“You’re smart, loyal, resourceful and brave. Much as I hate to encourage you, you can - at times! - be just the littlest bit funny. You would let the world burn to keep the people you love safe. Why wouldn’t anyone want you?”
Stiles was pretty sure he could be used as a nightlight right now with how red his cheeks were glowing. He coughed and hugged his legs to his chest. “Anyway. No. My turn. Never have I ever… sang karaoke.”
Derek put down a finger.
“Seriously? You’ve done karaoke? What did you sing - ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’? ‘Bad Moon Rising’? Wait, I’ve got it! You sang ‘Who Let The Dogs Out’, didn’t you?”
“Who, who, who, who, who,” muttered Derek tonelessly.
Stiles howled with laughter, cackles that turned into deep hacking coughs. He gasped for air. Derek’s expression slowly soured from irritated bemusement to concern and he leapt forward to steady Stiles.
As he rubbed Stiles’ back, his veins flooded dark, inky black.
“I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with ‘L’.”
Stiles groaned and threw his arm over his eyes. “Can we not right now? My head is killing me.”
“Okay Stiles,” said Derek quietly. “You just sleep.”
“You feeling better now? Stiles?”
Derek whaled on the walls of the cell, biting back whimpers as his fists hit the wolfsbane coating on the bricks.
“Hey assholes!” he cried up the stairs. “He’s dying! Don’t any of you give a fucking damn? He’s only sixteen. He’s a goddamn child and he’s human and he’s dying! Somebody help him!”
Derek paused and used his enhanced hearing to scan for any signs of movement from above. The only thing he could hear was the awful sound of Stiles’ choking, labored breaths. Derek’s eyes flickered red and he felt his claws digging into his own flesh, thick droplets of blood trickling down his fists. He hadn’t been this close to losing control over the wolf since, well…
(An endless stretch of anonymous hotel rooms stretching from one side of the US to the other. Constantly moving, running, one step ahead of the hunters. Yellowing wallpaper and the stench of strangers in the bedclothes. His sister’s heavy, judgemental looks on the back of his neck. The screams of his family echoing in his ears. A full moon in the sky. Only one howl returning his desperate calls.)
Derek wrestled his attention back, closing his eyes and blocking out all the other sounds. Focused in on the sound of a heartbeat. It was erratic and faint, but still there.
Derek cradled Stiles in his arms. For days, Stiles had talked and talked so that Derek wouldn’t have time to think, to fear what might happen to them. Now, he wasn’t able to and Derek wasn’t even strong enough to take over that role. Couldn’t think of a single fucking story to tell.
“You’re not selfish,” he whispered. “I’m selfish. When that door opened, and they threw you into this cell with me… the only thing I felt was relief. That at least I wasn’t going to die alone.”
It all happened very quickly in the end.
Scott burst down the door in a shower of woodchips, sunlight flooding in behind him and highlighting him in a golden halo. Derek privately thought that Stiles was right on the money when he described Scott as a comic book-level hero. The Sheriff, having broken the mountain ash line for him, followed seconds later. He holstered his gun and pulled Stiles out of Derek’s arms, ignoring the involuntary whimper of protest the action dragged out of Derek’s throat. The wrecked expression on Scott’s face would have immediately disproved Stiles’ fears about their friendship - if only he had been conscious to see it. The two of them took one look at Stiles’ state and bundled him into the police cruiser, rushing him to the hospital.
Derek walked back to the train depot alone.
Stiles breathed a sigh of relief as he sunk into his bed for the first time since being freed. The dark enclosed space felt much safer than the hospital ward, which had been too bright, too loud, too open. Too many voices, and not one of them the one Stiles had grown to rely on. Speaking of which…
“I know you’re there Sourwolf.”
A dark shadow flowed over his windowsill, dropping into his desk chair. “I see you’ve finally developed your attention to your senses.”
More like he had developed his attention to Derek, Stiles thought but didn’t say.
“It’s all going to change now, isn’t it?” Stiles said instead. “It can’t be- we can’t be… like we were in there.”
“Yes.”
Scott didn’t get it, when Stiles asked to keep the curtains round his hospital bed closed and the lights dimmed. Why would he want a reminder of the place where he had been kept captive? But the truth was, it was easier in there. Less complicated. Derek was his friend. Hunters were their enemies. Derek would play along with Stiles’ games, and Stiles would die before he abandoned Derek.
The unfairness of it all caught in Stiles’ throat.
“Then why did you come here?” he hissed.
“Not all change is bad.”
Stiles laughed hollowly. “Not in my experience. You know, I used to- In my head, my life is divided into Befores and Afters. Before my mom got sick. Before Scott was bitten. Before Gerard. Not exactly a series of ringing endorsements for change.”
“We changed. In that room. We changed together. Do you regret that?”
Stiles pushed himself off the bed and started pacing between the door and the window, still open to a moonlit sky.
“No,” he admitted. “But now you want to change us back!”
“Not change back. Just… evolve,” said Derek.
“Into what?”
“Whatever comes next.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means, I know you now. I know your hobbies, and your childhood stories, and the jokes you tell when you’re trying to be brave. I know how annoying you are when you’re bored and how incredible you are when you’re scared. I know your deepest darkest insecurities about Scott. I know you in sickness and in health.”
“You make it sound like you want to marry me,” Stiles sneered. “What, are you in love with me or something?”
Derek clenched his jaw, his back ramrod straight. For all the things he had learnt about Stiles in that cellar, this one he had already known. When Stiles felt exposed and vulnerable, he got mean.
“Maybe we can’t be exactly what we were in there, but we don’t have to go back to being sometimes enemies, occasional reluctant allies either. We could be… more.”
“I’m the son of the Sheriff, you’re the older man who’s been accused of murder. Twice. How could that work? Where would we even start?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Derek.
Stiles felt himself deflate. Despite himself, he’d found himself hoping against hope that Derek had seen something he couldn’t, something that could bridge the yawning chasm of pack loyalty and bloodshed and distrust.
“But,” continued Derek, “luckily I know someone who does.” He flashed red eyes and a rare dazzling toothy grin. “We have an agenda to get through, and I’ve found the nearest petting zoo.”