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“You shouldn’t be sick.”
“I’ve already told you a half dozen times, it’s magic, and Deaton’s looking for a cure--”
Stiles rolled his eyes as the rest of Derek’s sentence drowned in a coughing fit. The Alpha glared at him, eyes bloodshot and irises angrily red, which would have been way more impressive if Stiles hadn’t been resistant to his verbal and nonverbal threats to the point of total immunity, and also if Derek hadn’t been wrapped in a ton of ratty blankets, curled on the couch and radiating misery.
“What I meant was you should never, ever be sick,” Stiles told him. “You’re insufferable. And watch for that sneeze, it could easily take your head off.”
“That’s not my fault,” Derek murmured, rebellious, and Stiles must have had no preservation instinct at all, because he reached to brush the hair off his forehead to touch the skin, which was damp and way too hot.
“You must have, like, the worst fever in the fifty mile radius,” he said, because damn, it was actually kind of impressive Derek was still able to string two words together. Derek proceeded to glare at him and sink even deeper into the couch, drawing the blankets closer around himself. Stiles decided his death wish was now a fact and there was no need to fight the inevitable. “You look like a burrito. A sick burrito. I should take a picture and post it on the Internet.”
The growl was faint and actually kind of pitiful, but it would have taken a better man than Stiles to feel sorry for him. “Hey, I was joking. God, I hope they find something that works, and soon. You’re not a pretty sight at all. In fact, you could land a job in a flu vaccination ad in a second flat.”
Derek made a half-hearted attempt to bare his teeth at him, which apparently exhausted the last shreds of energy he had left, and he closed his eyes, head falling to the side. He looked younger, fragile, dark spots of color high on his cheeks and skin shining with sweat. It made something clench in Stiles’s chest, and he didn’t care to examine it too closely.
“Try not to die, all right? The pups would be inconsolable. Have you seen Isaac’s puppy eyes? I’m pretty sure this crap is illegal. If it isn’t, it should be. You see this kid and you want to buy him a cookie, and I know for a fact he can arm-wrestle a bear. Well, not that I’ve seen this first-hand, obviously, but he probably can. You, too, and wow, that’s kind of frightening when you think about it.”
“I. Am. Not. Dying.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, Stiles.”
“But if you die, I’m totally taking your car.”
A corner of Derek’s mouth tugged upward almost imperceptibly. “You’re not taking my car. I’m taking her with me. Nobody takes my car.”
“So now you want a Viking funeral. Great.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Just leave me in my car to die.” He snorted and started coughing again, dry wracking coughs that seemed never to end, leaving him even paler and trembling. Stiles picked up a glass of water he had put on the floor and made Derek drink a bit. The werewolf uttered a grudging thanks and sunk deeper under the covers, trying to catch his wheezing breath.
“They’ll find you something to get rid of it, don’t worry,” Stiles said, not entirely sure if he liked how his voice sounded, milder and softer. “I do hope it’s disgusting,” he added reflexively. “When I’m sick, they always give me something disgusting.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m never sick.”
“Well, that’s bullshit, ‘cause you are, and right now, and just so you know, cough syrups are sticky and disgusting. You totally deserve something disgusting. You know, for being the whiniest patient ever.”
“I can’t breathe normally, I’ve lost all sense of smell, and everything’s fuzzy around the edges,” Derek said, indignant. “Excuse me for being less than overjoyed.”
“Treat it as a learning experience,” Stiles said. “See, that’s how we normals feel sometimes. Fuzzy and with useless noses.”
Derek murmured something about it being unfair, and human noses being useless all the time, not just now and then, sneezed and fell silent. Stiles touched his forehead again, mostly to do something with his hands, though a small portion of his mind suspected it might have been less than wise course of action. Derek was still burning, and while his body usually radiated heat like a small furnace, now it was unnatural to the point of uncomfortable. Stiles had tried to soak a rag in cold water, cool his forehead a little, but it proved to be rather pointless, it warmed up too quickly to be of any use.
It was getting colder outside, the night fully dark already, and it occurred to Stiles that the Hale house might have been less than ideal place to spend the night in the middle of November. He resisted an urge to put his hands under the covers. Derek shifted impatiently and demanded more water. Most of it missed his mouth, running in trickles down his chin.
“You should probably get some sleep,” Stiles told him, awkwardly trying to wipe the water with his sleeve, which earned him a glare that could kill. “What? It usually makes us mortals feel better.”
“Ugh,” Derek said, as if tired of human bullshit, period, and closed his eyes again, curling slightly into himself. Stiles watched him, his hand still somewhere around his shoulder, strangely unwilling to move. He’d never seen the Alpha like that before, motionless, asleep, vulnerable, instead of being all strength and finely-toned muscle. And threats. You couldn’t forget threats, of course. Or staring anything that came into his way into submission, whichever worked best.
The draft in the house was getting colder. Stiles wrapped his hoodie tighter around himself, hid his hands in the sleeves and tried to think about something warm, which got his thoughts back to Derek, and that wasn’t the direction he wanted, oh no, not at all. Especially when the wolf in question was so close, barely inches away, and wonder of wonders, relying on Stiles to watch over him. The world was ending, surely.
He glanced at his phone and it showed the time just before midnight. Great. Now he’d probably have to wait until morning for the others to show up, which meant the night in the house, on the same narrow couch as Derek and his magical sickness, which with his luck was probably contagious. He shivered and tried his best to keep his teeth from chattering. The swimming pool had been colder. Always look for the silver lining.
Derek opened one sleepy eye and glared at him. “Stop it,” he said, voice gruff.
“Stop what?”
“I may be without smell, but I can feel you shaking. You’re cold.”
“Do they give some kind of awards for stating the obvious? Because you’ve just won one, Captain.”
Derek stared at him wordlessly until he relented. “Okay, fine. Fine. What?”
“Come here,” Derek said, and he probably meant it to be sensible. He moved slightly to the side. “They’ll kill me if you get sick, too.”
Stiles waited for the inevitable apocalypse, because damn, there was no way it was happening for real. Maybe it was a really weird dream and he was about to wake up hungover somewhere in a ditch, or maybe he overdosed on something. Moments passed and nothing happened, and Derek was still looking at him expectantly, even unwrapped one of his blankets a bit. The guy was quite literally raised by wolves, maybe it was a pack thing, and perfectly normal to share body heat, or something, anything.
It started to rain outside. Stiles sighed, rolled his eyes and decided that his dignity had died a tragic death anyway a while ago, so what the hell. Derek offered, so he probably wouldn’t rip his throat out in the morning, or at least Stiles hoped so. There was just enough space for him to fit, and no way to maintain honorable distance, and Derek was still ridiculously muscled and radiating heat, smelling of forest herbs, slightly of wet fur, but mostly sweat and dust, which shouldn’t have been hot, but it was probably the law of the universe to make everything about Derek Hale hot. Stiles’s life was so unfair.
Derek huffed, as if Stiles had been the one being unreasonable, threw a blanket over him and closed his eyes, his face relaxing into sleep almost instantly. “I hate you so, so much,” Stiles murmured, “and I hope you don’t have fleas.”
He woke up with a snoring werewolf pressed into his back, face hidden in his neck, and to Peter Hale laughing his head off.